L.A. ELECTIONS : Tuesday Is Also a Referendum on Riordan : Mayor faces key test after endorsing several council candidates and urging support for charter amendments to expand his power.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s clout with voters will be put to a direct test Tuesday for the first time since he was elected nearly two years ago.

The mayor has anted up in the City Council’s 5th District race by endorsing candidate Barbara Yaroslavsky and helping the wife of the district’s former lawmaker raise campaign funds.

Two proposed City Charter amendments on Tuesday’s ballot have also been described as critical to Riordan’s efforts to reinvent a sluggish city government, including one that would sharply strengthen the mayor’s authority in firing City Hall’s top executives.

Finally, in Tuesday’s only other hotly contested council race--in which Councilman Nate Holden is trying to beat back a determined challenge from attorney J. Stanley Sanders in the 10th District--Riordan has emerged as a major offstage figure. In a twist on the usual dynamics of politics, both candidates are seeking to distance themselves from Riordan, who has not made an endorsement in the race.

Overall, the mayor is playing a pivotal role in the election.

“His reputation is on the line,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Claremont Graduate School political science professor.

“It is the first time since he was elected that the mayor has asked the voters to support his reform agenda and those candidates who, like him, share that agenda,” Deputy Mayor Robin Kramer said.

To win outright in the primary, a candidate needs to receive 50% plus one vote. Otherwise, the top two candidates in each district will face each other in a June 6 runoff election.

Riordan has also endorsed five incumbent council members--Joel Wachs, John Ferraro, Ruth Galanter, Hal Bernson and Richard Alatorre--who are seeking reelection. None of the five faces well-financed opposition from politically prominent candidates.

Wachs, a councilman since 1971, is opposed by Wayne Clary, a computer consultant. Ferraro, a councilman since 1966, has been challenged by community organizer Linda Lockwood. Galanter, an incumbent since 1987, is running against Sal Grammatico, a businessman and environmentalist; Richard Joseph Neizgodski, a rehabilitation construction specialist, and Jill Prestup, a businesswoman-educator.

Bernson, who has been on the council since 1979, is opposed by Maria Armoudian, a journalist, publisher and teacher, and David R. Guzman Sr., a city interdepartmental coordinator. Richard Alatorre, a city lawmaker since 1985, has been challenged by Alvin Parra, a program director.

In the 8th District, as in the 10th, Riordan has stayed neutral in a race in which Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a frequent critic of Riordan, is seeking reelection to a second term. The district consists of the heart of the city’s African American community. Ridley-Thomas is opposed by Addie Miller, a businesswoman, and Cal Burton, a broadcast executive.

In the 5th District race, Riordan stands ready to gain a solid ally if Yaroslavsky wins. Yaroslavsky faces three candidates as she tries to move into the post left vacant when her husband, Zev, resigned from the council to join the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Yaroslavsky’s opponents are former Los Angeles Unified school board member Roberta Weintraub, Michael Feuer, former head of a legal services clinic, and Jeff Brain, a Studio City real estate agent.

“I’m going to be on (Riordan’s) team to change City Hall,” Yaroslavsky said Friday during a televised forum. It was a familiar performance: Yaroslavsky has repeatedly invoked the mayor’s endorsement on the hustings.

“Before the campaign’s over, Barbara’s going to have a hyphenated name,” said political consultant Parke Skelton, commenting on Yaroslavsky’s use of Riordan’s name.

Skelton, who is running Weintraub’s campaign, has to admit that Yaroslavsky is smart to do so.

“It gives her a good entree with voters . . . (because) Riordan has a 60% favorable rating in the district,” Skelton said.

He added, however, that Riordan is not enough. As with most endorsements, they can be useful, but the candidates must close the deal with voters, Skelton said.

Riordan, who made millions as a venture capitalist before taking office, also will be asking voters Tuesday to back his plans to bring corporate practices and efficiencies to City Hall.

Although the mayor has endorsed all eight City Charter measures on the ballot, two are key to his efforts to reinvent government.

They are Charter Amendment 2, which would make it much easier for the mayor to fire any of the city’s 30 top executives, and Charter Amendment 1, which would permit the streamlining of the city’s system of buying goods and hiring contractors that results in $34 million a year in unnecessary expenditures.

The most controversial of these measures is Charter Amendment 2, which critics say would strip the city’s general managers of Civil Service protections that keep their judgments independent and free of political influence.

Despite the long history of voters’ rejection of such measures, Riordan is leading the charge in favor of Charter Amendment 2 and has helped raise more than $300,000 to sell the campaign’s message to voters.

Also on the ballot is Charter Amendment 3 to permit the hiring of an inspector general in the Police Department to investigate complaints of officer misconduct. Charter Amendments 4, 5 and 6 would, respectively, increase the number of directors who run the city’s civilian pension system, allow the system to pay its administrative costs with pension money, and permit pensioners to name trusts and charities as their beneficiaries.

Charter Amendment 7 would put a cap on the pensions paid to the city’s top fire and police executives. Charter Amendment 8 would allow the city’s Department of Airports to adopt a new accounting system.

Meanwhile, the mayor has been unwillingly dragged into the 10th District race, where Holden and Sanders are grappling with the black community’s growing unease with the mayor and seeking to distance themselves from Riordan.

Also running in the district is Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Ross, who is viewed as a potential spoiler who might deprive Holden of the majority the incumbent needs to win outright Tuesday.

Ironically, it was a widely held maxim six months ago that Riordan’s endorsement would be a plus.

“Who’d have thought then that being affiliated with a popular mayor would have been a negative?” one black political activist said recently.

But in the intervening months, the mayor’s stock in the black community has plummeted.

Only last weekend, African American community leaders met at a Crenshaw district church to air their grievances about the mayor. Holden was among the participants.

It was against this backdrop that Holden sent out a mailer last week to 10th District voters--60% of whom are black, 80% of whom are Democrats--that noted that “Stan Sanders supports Republican candidates when it benefits his personal interests.”

It was a reference to the fact that Sanders, a candidate in the 1993 mayoral race, endorsed Riordan during the 1993 runoff between Riordan and Mike Woo. But now, as he seeks 10th District votes, Sanders has sidled away from the mayor. “I am my own man,” he said in a recent interview. “Clearly, I don’t owe him anything after he did not endorse me after what I did for him. I am not Riordan’s surrogate.”

Sanders also has charged that Holden secretly helped Riordan’s 1993 election bid by quietly authorizing two of his City Hall staff members to work full time during the last two weeks of the campaign to round up votes for Riordan.

“The difference is that my support for Riordan was aboveboard, and Holden did his under the table,” Sanders said. “If it’s a negative on me for having endorsed Riordan, it’s a double negative on Holden for doing it the way he did.”

Holden has vehemently denied the charge. “My aides will take a polygraph,” he said.

Reviewing the exchange on the Riordan issue, Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton and an expert on Los Angeles politics, said: “In a sense, these guys are lucky to be running against each other because it seems like they have the same liability.”