Riordan Is His Own Worst Enemy

The uproar at City Hall over top mayoral aide Michael Keeley shows that the real threat to Mayor Richard Riordan’s reelection in 1997 is not Howard Berman, Tom Hayden, Mark Ridley-Thomas or even Michael Keeley. The major barrier to Riordan’s reelection is Richard Riordan and his unusual governing style.

The revelation that Keeley had secretly passed legal documents to a law firm representing a client in litigation against the city mobilized City Atty. James K. Hahn, a Riordan adversary, and sparked a remarkable City Council no-confidence vote Tuesday on Keeley. The uproar came in the midst of the kickoff of the mayor’s campaign. The unfortunate timing only underlined how Riordan’s governing style has held his own reelection hostage.

Los Angeles has a city charter that makes the mayor’s office a weak one. Riordan has tried to solve the charter dilemma not by building coalitions with other elected officials but by constructing an informal mayoral government outside normal processes. His network of management consultants and private lawyers has fostered a politically isolated mayoralty with unclear barriers to conflicts of interest.

The Keeley case shows how the lines have become blurred between who works for the city and who does not. Riordan can plausibly claim that this system has allowed him to make difficult management changes at City Hall, but he will need to convince the voters that the benefits of business-style management outweigh its civic liabilities.

Riordan has increasingly acted as the city’s CEO, casting the powerful and proud City Council as his board of directors. This has diluted his once-strong support base on the City Council.

The Keeley vote is only the latest in a line of council rebukes to Riordan’s power, on subjects as diverse as the police chief, city planning and economic development in South-Central Los Angeles. Council reaction to the mayor’s budget last week was noticeably cool. Even Riordan stalwart Richard Alatorre skipped the mayor’s state of the city address and on Tuesday voted to reprimand Keeley.

The council is important not only because of its broad charter powers, but also because of the politically sensitive antennae of its members. They are not just an obstacle to mayoral power; they are also a potential resource for a mayor who has kept his distance from the public.

If Riordan has treated the City Council as a board of directors, he has treated the voters as passive stockholders who should not disrupt the corporation’s annual meeting. Riordan has kept a low-visibility schedule of public appearances and has rarely appeared at neighborhood meetings where opposition to his policies is voiced.

For his election campaign, Riordan has adopted the rhetoric of “neighborhood empowerment.” But does he really understand that the advocates of neighborhood councils hope to place real power at the grass-roots, the exact antithesis of his administration? How would he feel at a neighborhood council meeting filled with shouting residents angry at his policies? Or is this neighborhood focus a convenient way to avoid the harsh accountability of a real election campaign?

In a little-noticed action on the same day as the Keeley vote, the council blocked a Riordan plan to charge residents as much as $5,000 if they appealed planning decisions on projects more than 500 feet from their homes. The controversy pitted Riordan’s business-oriented Development Reform Committee against highly motivated homeowner groups. That’s neighborhood empowerment.

Riordan’s CEO style may soon face the challenge of public debates with aggressive opponents--unfamiliar territory for the mayor. He has a decent case to make: He has greatly improved efficiency at City Hall and has gone a surprisingly long way toward meeting his police hiring goals. But he still has to show that his approach really has set off a city “rebound,” and that the lives of city residents--and not just the business atmosphere--have been improved.

The key to ensuring Riordan’s easy reelection is a bluff: Convince potential opponents that they can neither raise enough money nor generate enough support to make a challenge worthwhile. But an uncontested reelection may not serve the public interest. Local politics has never enjoyed the visibility in Los Angeles that it does in other major cities. Riordan’s newfound interest in neighborhood empowerment is no substitute for the accountability of a real election, one that can raise the profile of a City Hall that has become even more remote than it once was.