Riordan-Alatorre Alliance Stands Firm

On the surface, at least, the strong alliance between Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilman Richard Alatorre appears to be the embodiment of that old saw about politics making strange bedfellows.

There is outsider and political novice Riordan, the wealthy, pro-business, Republican lawyer from Brentwood who saw his election three years ago as a mandate to shake things up at City Hall.

And there is insider Alatorre, the savvy, blunt liberal Democrat from the Eastside, a veteran of three decades in the rough and tumble world of state and local politics who speaks with unabashed pride about “the institution I’m a part of.”

Yet for three years, Alatorre has been Riordan’s strongest council ally, enjoying a level of perks and access well beyond that afforded even to those council members who share more of the mayor’s political views. Even the recent budget-spawned feud that boiled up publicly between them for several weeks soon came to be regarded as little more than a tricky but ultimately negotiable turn in their curiously shared political highway.

“Like every relationship, there are going to be bumps, but I think fundamentally there is really no change,” said Bill Wardlaw, one of the mayor’s closest friends and his main political advisor.

The bumps weren’t exactly small potatoes. In rapid succession this spring, Alatorre helped sink Michael Keeley, a top Riordan aide and longtime friend caught in a City Hall scandal. Alatorre lobbied the mayor to get rid of Keeley, who tended to ignore political niceties and sometimes made enemies on the council and among department heads. Then, as head of the council’s budget committee, Alatorre led the charge to scale back Police Department expansion, Riordan’s top priority, cutting the number of police recruits to be hired in the coming year from 710 to 450.

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If the council goes ahead with its intention to ask voters in November if they are willing to pay a public safety tax to cover the difference, Alatorre, who favors leaving the decision to voters, and Riordan, who promised the full expansion without raising taxes, would find themselves on opposite sides of a hot central issue.

Nonetheless, many veteran City Hall watchers, who see a relationship based largely on political pragmatism and continuing mutual benefit, say they would have been surprised to see any lasting rift.

Alatorre, 53, and Riordan, 66, had known each other for years before Riordan decided to try his hand at politics by jumping into the 1993 race to succeed Tom Bradley, who was retiring after an unprecedented five terms. Both are longtime prominent Catholics who are part of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s high-profile orbit, and they share in much of his activism, especially in youth and education matters. (Riordan’s philanthropy, particularly in both Catholic and public inner-city schools, made him a player long before he won the city’s top political job.)

The relationship began in earnest soon after Riordan and then-Councilman Mike Woo, a liberal Asian American, emerged from the April primary to compete in a June runoff. Alatorre quickly announced he was supporting Riordan. That gave the fiscally conservative Republican his first endorsement from a prominent minority politician--and provided an early signal that the potent multiracial coalition underpinning Bradley’s historic tenure as the city’s first black mayor was about to crumble.

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A Times analysis of voting in the runoff election--in which Riordan outpolled Woo 54% to 46%--showed that most of the mayor’s support came from whites. Less than 20% of African Americans voted for him, and he got little more than 30% of the Asian American vote. Among Latinos, however, Riordan received 43% of the vote, a showing that analysts said was helped by Alatorre’s early and vigorous support for Riordan.

Alatorre was well rewarded. Riordan appointed the councilman’s wife, Angie, to the transition team and included some of Alatorre’s close allies in his commission appointments. Riordan also named Alatorre to a seat on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board and helped the councilman win approval for a costly extension of the Red Line subway to the Eastside.

For the councilman who cut his political teeth while still in high school working for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and won his first office, a seat on the California Democratic Party State Central Committee, at the age of 25, an alliance with the city’s top elected official seems true to form.

As a state assemblyman from 1973 to 1985, Alatorre played a key role in the 1980 hardball leadership fight that brought the fall of Assembly Speaker Leo T. McCarthy and ushered in Willie L. Brown Jr.’s long and powerful reign in the top spot. Not surprisingly, Alatorre, who provided Brown with a pivotal vote, became one of the new speaker’s key lieutenants.

After winning the City Council’s 14th District seat in a December 1985 special election to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of longtime incumbent Arthur K. Snyder, Alatorre quickly positioned himself as a council ally to Bradley at a time when the mayor’s power was beginning to wane. Bradley had joined the list of local politicians who backed Alatorre over six other contenders, and Alatorre, whose $300,000 campaign fund allowed him to greatly outspend his competitors, won 60% of the vote.

Alatorre said he has a genuine bond with Riordan after working with him a decade ago during a yearlong battle to save Cathedral High School, a beloved Catholic boys’ high school in Chinatown that the Los Angeles archdiocese had planned to close and sell to a condominium developer.

They have much in common, from strong support for the Police Department--and an ill-disguised disappointment in Chief Willie L. Williams--to ties with Latino business leaders. Both are adept at behind-the-scenes deal-making, a skill that has brought them critics as well as admirers.

Alatorre said the two share some personality traits as well:

“We’re both impulsive and impatient, and we both tend to get involved in too many things.”

They have a bond also in Robin Kramer, Alatorre’s former chief deputy and a City Hall insider whom the councilman urged the mayor to add to his staff of mainly political neophytes. Kramer joined the administration in late October 1993 as one of several deputy mayors. A year ago, she became chief of staff in one of a series of personnel shake-ups. She shared top billing with Chief Operating Officer Keeley until he was forced to resign a month ago in the wake of revelations he had surreptitiously shared a confidential city legal strategy memo with an opposing attorney in a contract dispute.

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“She had some concerns” about working for Riordan, Alatorre said of an early conversation he had with Kramer, then with a political consulting firm. “But I said, ‘He’s got a beautiful heart and a good mind. You’ll like him.’

“I really like the man. I have a lot invested in him, and I want him to succeed. I took a lot of [grief] for supporting him, but I’d do it all again.”

That hasn’t changed, insisted Alatorre, who endorsed Riordan’s reelection campaign even as the two headed on their collision course over the budget and Keeley, its chief architect. Riordan and the councilman have since resumed their close relationship, which the mayor said he considers a true friendship.

“I love him,” Riordan said. “He’s absolutely brilliant. . . . He has a great legislative mind” and has gained valuable experience in his climb through the political ranks.

The men continued to talk despite their conflicts over the size of the police expansion, and both publicly denied a rumor that Riordan had threatened to take away Alatorre’s prized MTA seat.

“I did get mad at him,” Riordan said in an interview, adding he was upset by Alatorre’s “vehemence.” “I told him he went too far,” the mayor said, but agreed the lines of communication stayed open.

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In fact, when Riordan returned to City Hall after meeting with Times editors and reporters the afternoon before he vetoed the council’s expansion reduction and a handful of other budget changes, Alatorre was in the mayor’s suite, waiting to talk some more.

“I helped write the veto message,” Alatorre said later, which may help explain its curiously conciliatory tone. Gone were the references to council members as “wimps” that the mayor had angrily made in the days after the council’s police-hiring rollback vote. In their place was a pledge to work on an improved, cooperative relationship with the council.

Veteran Councilman Joel Wachs, who championed the mayor’s budget in council debate and shares much of the mayor’s views on transforming city government, said he was not surprised by the temporary Riordan-Alatorre rift, given their “very different views and political positions.”

“Richard [Alatorre], like most of us, is going to do what he thinks is right,” Wachs said. By the same token, he said, Riordan had to fight for the promise he made to voters to dramatically increase the police force. Neither man was hurt by the battle, he said.

Alatorre seemed to confirm speculation that he had picked the fight at least in part to prove his independence from the mayor.

“Everybody went into this budgetary process with me being suspect, and I know that,” Alatorre said of the liberal majority on the council. “I’ll carry the mayor’s water when I think he’s right, but I’ll be the first to criticize him when I think he’s wrong. . . . I guess that surprised them.”