Women Applaud Riordan at Benefit

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan did lunch Tuesday in Beverly Hills with nearly 900 power-suited women at a $100-a-plate fund-raiser for his spring reelection bid.

The “Women for Riordan” who poured into the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel seemed to overwhelm the place--the entrance to the ballroom was jammed; the parking entrance looked like a rush-hour SigAlert on the San Diego Freeway. It was almost an hour past the scheduled noon starting time before most of those attending the oversold event were served the main course of chilled chicken breast with avocado, papaya and citrus segments. And the featured speaker, prominent author Gail Sheehy, had to cancel at the last minute.

None of that seemed to dampen the enthusiasm of the paying guests or the mayor, who enjoyed three standing ovations over the course of the event and drew several bursts of applause during his speech.

“When I leave office,” said Riordan, whose second campaign for mayor will be his last (courtesy of a term limits measure he helped push through), “I want to be remembered as someone who loved Los Angeles, someone who cared enough to give back. And who cared enough to take the heat--to set goals and have the courage to reach those goals.”

With seven co-chairs and 153 on the host committee for the lunch, the Riordan campaign seemed eager to close a gender gap as the 66-year-old attorney-entrepreneur seeks a second term in the city’s top office next spring. A Times poll found in June that public perceptions of Riordan varied by gender: 50% of men approved of the way he was handling his job, while only 42% of women did.

Riordan once again sounded many of the now-familiar themes he carried from the 1993 campaign trail into City Hall’s corner suite--safer streets (with a promise to add almost 3,000 police officers to the force over five years), more livable neighborhoods and a more efficient, more “business friendly” bureaucracy.

He also made a pitch for his efforts to overhaul the City Charter and alluded to his nearly finished signature drive to put his controversial recipe for reform before city voters:

“Citizens are overwhelmingly responding to our campaign . . . reminding me once again that Angelenos are willing to try almost anything,” Riordan said, “as long as it doesn’t block traffic.”

The “Women for Riordan” listed on the program included several prominent Democrats among the active champions of the mayor’s Republican Party.

Former state treasurer and Democratic nominee for governor Kathleen Brown was on the 153-member host committee, as was USC law and political science professor Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis’ campaign for president and served as speaker when Sheehy bowed out.

There were some council wives--Angie Alatorre, whose husband, Councilman Richard Alatorre, is a strong Riordan ally; Margaret Ferraro, wife of Council President John Ferraro, and Robyn Bernson, wife of San Fernando Councilman Hal Bernson, a Republican former businessman who shares much of Riordan’s approach to government. But none of the council’s four female members attended, unless you want to count Roz Wyman, two decades out of office but still a political force.

The place overflowed with longtime friends, business associates, commissioners and family members--including Riordan’s activist for children and girlfriend Nancy Daly, and his three daughters, Mary Beth Ferrel, Kathy Riordan and Patricia Riordan.

Riordan also used the lunch to display the inclusiveness that many have criticized him as lacking.

Riordan’s primary election support came from white residents in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, and the Los Angeles Times Poll has shown that he lacks strong support among blacks, and, to a lesser degree, Latinos.

To introduce him at the fund-raising luncheon, Riordan picked prominent African American community leader Genethia Hudley Hayes, who runs the Los Angeles branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Hayes, who said she got to know Riordan when she joined a 30-member delegation that the mayor led on a recent eight-day state visit to Israel, said she found him to be open to hearing others’ views and lauded his interest in improving the lot of children.

And, she added, “he is not afraid to share his thoughts and opinions.”