Bradley Is Showered With Praise at Tribute

It was, first and foremost, a love fest for a recuperating Tom Bradley--the man whose coalition-building skills won him ethnically diverse Los Angeles’ highest office and kept him there for 20 record-breaking years.

The nostalgic, emotion-packed tribute to Bradley, arranged by Council President John Ferraro, drew swarms of well-wishers Friday to greet the former mayor and have their pictures taken with him at the breakfast reception outside Ferraro’s office.

From office workers and parking attendants to elected officials and department heads, they hugged, shook hands, reminisced and uttered praise for Bradley, 79, who has been unable to speak or write clearly since suffering a stroke last April.

Exclamations of “Doesn’t he look great?” and “It’s so good to see him!” filled the air around Bradley, clearly thinner but still tall and imposing in a gray suit, white shirt and multicolored tie.

But the Tom Bradley Day celebration at City Hall also crackled at times with undercurrents of criticism for the wealthy entrepreneur-lawyer who succeeded him in 1993--Mayor Richard Riordan.

“He was a mayor for all of us,” one longtime city staffer observed, nodding wistfully toward Bradley as he stood graciously for a seemingly endless parade of those who wanted to be photographed with him--Riordan included.

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It was a reference to Bradley’s popularity across racial and ethnic lines but also to problems Riordan has had gaining the confidence of blacks, and, to a lesser extent, Latinos, according to several surveys by the Times poll.

On Friday, Riordan’s breakfast reception remarks in praise of Bradley--he called him “a great symbol of the city . . . a great leader”--drew a dig from Councilwoman Rita Walters.

“Tom Bradley will certainly go down in history not just as a symbol of Los Angeles but as a symbol of what was the best of Los Angeles,” said Walters, one of three African American council members and an outspoken Riordan critic.

When the celebration moved downstairs to the council chambers, Bradley drew standing ovations from the audience and a string of accolades from an unusually unified City Council.

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“We needed this,” longtime Councilman Joel Wachs said, referring to the infighting and sometimes racially tinged divisiveness that have increasingly characterized council dealings. “Today, Tom Bradley remains the one person who has the capacity to bring us together.”

Longtime Bradley friend and top aide Bill Elkins, who delivered remarks on Bradley’s behalf, credited his former boss with fostering the “smooth working relationship” with the council needed to get things done.

Riordan’s rocky relations with the council have been exacerbated by the mayor’s campaign to overhaul the City Charter. Critics see the reforms as an effort to shift power from the council to the mayor’s office.

Homage to Bradley, however, was the dominant theme, and it came from all around the horseshoe-shaped desk council members share at meetings.

“You can see the love the people of Los Angeles hold for you,” Ferraro told the man whose reelection bid he had challenged in 1985. “We miss you . . . we love you.” Nate Holden--who nearly forced Bradley into a bitter runoff in 1989 when charges of financial improprieties and cronyism helped erode the mayor’s popularity--was equally effusive.

It was the normally no-nonsense Marvin Braude, however, who best summed up the emotion of the day:

“I almost come to tears, seeing you here,” Braude told his former longtime colleague.