Hat in Ring, Riordan Goes Hat in Hand

After a year of public bickering with the Los Angeles City Council, Mayor Richard Riordan has asked 12 of the 15 lawmakers--including several of his most bitter foes--to endorse his reelection effort.

So far, seven have signed on, with one or two members still weighing whether to formally support the underdog challenger, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), and the rest vowing to stay neutral.

“Given that he’s spent so much energy condemning the City Council, I was a little surprised that he would expect people to endorse him,” Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said, adding that she will not back either mayoral candidate. “It doesn’t feel right to me to turn around and say, despite the fact that I’m very critical of him, I endorse his reelection. That to me would be the worst kind of political expediency.”

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, one of the seven council members running for reelection along with Riordan, said: “I’d rather lose than endorse him--or have him endorse me.”

With polls showing Riordan and the council incumbents cruising to easy victory April 8, the most contentious item in the campaign is the election of a commission to rewrite the City Charter. The council and the mayor are in large part on opposite sides of this campaign.

While some City Hall observers see Riordan’s personal phone calls asking council members for their endorsements as an olive branch after months of bad relations, many believe the response portends continued struggles between the city’s legislative and executive branches. One of the members endorsing Riordan, Marvin Braude, is retiring, leaving the mayor with six solid backers--two shy of the majority needed to pass legislation.

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“Can he get those others? I don’t think so,” said UCLA political scientist Xandra Kayden. “That shows the weakness of the mayor. Those are the people he’s either tried to alienate or has ignored. A mayor of this city needs eight votes, and he doesn’t have it.”

Elected as an outsider determined to run government more like a business, the multimillionaire mayor has had rough relations with the council since he arrived at City Hall in 1993. Many members complain of a lack of respect--Riordan and his staff fail to consult them on projects, they say, and often try to skirt the governmental processes involving the council.

The past year has been particularly rocky.

Last April, the council took an unprecedented vote of “no confidence” in one of the mayor’s top deputies, who left City Hall soon after, saying he couldn’t abide the politics of the place. A month later, the council rejected a key part of Riordan’s budget proposal involving the hiring of police; Riordan responded by sending nasty letters to constituents of council members Laura Chick and Rita Walters saying they didn’t want to expand the Police Department.

No battle has been more heated, however, than the months-long struggle over charter reform.

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At the core of the debate is the power dynamic between the city’s legislative and executive branches, which now gives the council control over most city business, leaving the mayor’s office, mainly, as a bully pulpit.

Riordan angered the council last fall by spearheading--and funding--a drive for an elected commission to rewrite the city’s 72-year-old constitution, despite the fact that the council had already appointed a panel to do the same work. Now the mayor and the council are raising funds to support separate slates of candidates for the elected commission.

“The mayor has got to decide which side he’s on. He’s spent 90 percent of his time trying to abolish the City Council, attacking them on every front, and then he asks them to endorse him? I don’t understand that,” said Councilman Nate Holden. “Speaking of being out of touch.”

Holden and the council’s two other African American members, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters, are the only ones who Riordan has not asked for endorsements, according to interviews with lawmakers and the mayor. Riordan and his campaign manager, Julio Ramirez, said they may not yet be done making phone calls.

“I’m asking for a lot of endorsements,” the mayor said in an interview last week. “It’s part of politics.”

Those supporting Riordan for reelection include the council’s only two Republicans, Hal Bernson and Rudy Svorinich, as well as Joel Wachs, a former Republican who is now registered as an independent. In addition, the mayor is backed by Richard Alatorre, an old friend who has been among his strongest council allies; council President John Ferraro; and Richard Alarcon, a centrist who has been increasingly supportive of mayoral proposals in recent months.

“We recognize we won’t agree on everything, but where we do agree, we can create synergy and work better together,” Alarcon said. “We’ve had four years of improvement. What I’ve said is, why change horses in the middle of a stream?”

Alatorre said he was glad to hear that Riordan has reached out to Galanter and Goldberg--with whom he has tangled over charter reform--and to Chick, whom sources say he once called “public enemy No. 1.”

“I’d like him to spend more time cultivating the City Council, because this is not about him against the council,” Alatorre said. “I don’t think he’s been as effective as he could be. He has to work at it constantly.

“You don’t take anybody for granted in this place,” he added. “Like any politician, they need to be wined and dined.”

Former Mayor Tom Bradley, who served on the City Council for 10 years before his two decades in the city’s top job, often enjoyed broad support from his former colleagues. He had as many as nine of the 15 members behind him in the 1977 election, and received several endorsements from council members even when one of their own challenged him, in 1985 and 1989.

“He said to us, over and over again, that if the agenda of this city was to move forward, there had to be a smooth working relationship between the mayor’s office and the City Council,” said Bill Elkins, a longtime aide to Bradley. “He never forgot that . . . cardinal principle. If you’ve lost it, I hope you will find a way to regain it.”