L.A. Mayoral Battle Moves Into Black Neighborhoods

Making use of a civil rights resume that began with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) is attacking Mayor Richard Riordan where he has always been weakest: in black neighborhoods of South Los Angeles.

On Saturday, the underdog challenger stood with anti-gang activists in the Crenshaw district to sign a pledge for peace, then joined a cadre of black elected officials to rally against welfare cuts at the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts. Last week, he stood with embattled Police Chief Willie L. Williams at a neighborhood meeting that drew about 400 residents, most of them black.

This morning, he plans to attend services at the massive West Angeles Church of God in Christ.

“The primary issue in Los Angeles is race and class and prejudice and misunderstanding,” Hayden said at a recent luncheon of minority business owners. “You need a mayor who . . . can be in constant conversation with people, who has a vision of how the whole fits together, who has an honor and respect toward the nationalities, the races, those who have been underrepresented in the past and can work as a weaver to bring together the threads of the whole.”

Hayden is hoping that a coalition of the city’s most disenfranchised people will emerge over the next month to oust the incumbent in the April 8 election, and has opened an office in the heart of Crenshaw in an effort to increase turnout in black neighborhoods.

It is far from certain that his longshot strategy will pay off.

Riordan has had some well-publicized differences with black leaders, most recently over Williams’ future.

A Times poll in February showed that Riordan’s popularity is weakest among African Americans, 38% of whom said they approve of the mayor’s job performance. Overall, blacks favored Hayden 37% to 32% for Riordan. But this is still far better for Riordan than it was in 1993, when his opponent, Councilman Mike Woo, captured 86% of the black vote

In any case, blacks are wielding decreasing political power in city elections, because their numbers are dwindling relative to other groups and turnout remains historically low.

They cast only 12% of the ballots in the 1993 mayoral election (18% in the April primary that year).

“You’ve got to tell everyone you know to go out on April 8,” Hayden aide Connie Brown told the crowd of about 50 Saturday morning at the peace pledge event. “This election will be decided on how many phone calls you make, how many leaflets you pass out, how many signs you put up.”

To boost his chances in the black community, Riordan had lined up an impressive list of African American endorsements even before Hayden announced his candidacy. Thirty leaders signed on, ranging from basketball star Magic Johnson to the Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray and Los Angeles politicians including county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, U.S. Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles) and state Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood).

“Many voters will be impressed that the leaders that they trust and respect have decided that Mayor Riordan has done a great job as mayor, and they’ll be convinced,” Riordan political strategist Bill Wardlaw predicted confidently Saturday afternoon. “The issues that he has campaigned on and governed on--public safety and economic growth--are issues that are as vitally important to South-Central as they are to other parts of the city.”

Wardlaw and Gil Ray, a prominent attorney who heads the Community Development Bank and is one of Riordan’s leading black supporters, both said the mayor does not have a specific strategy to court African American votes.

“To say, ‘This mayor has not served this particular segment of the community well and I’m going to exploit that,’ I don’t think that’s the type of person who can lead the entire city,” Ray said in an interview. “The mayor has tried to serve the entire community. He talks about issues--crime, education, jobs--that make all the communities prosper.”

At the welfare rally, Hayden said Riordan had done nothing to help poor blacks. “I don’t know if you understand that your mayor is a Republican who supports these cuts, who supports (Gov.) Pete Wilson,” Hayden said.

Referring to Riordan’s policy of not accepting a salary, he added: “He’s a dollar-a-year mayor, but it sounds like he wants to put a lot of you on a dollar a year to try out his regimen.” Though he was on the dais with Hughes and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a popular black leader who has allied herself with the mayor on various projects, Hayden brushed off the importance of high-profile endorsements compared to grass-roots support.

“Maxine Waters has one vote on April 8,” he said. “The people in that room have 500 votes. They’re not going to vote for Riordan.”

Riordan, a Republican, has struggled to win support in the African American community since taking office in 1993. His reputation there suffered when Los Angeles failed to win a berth in the federal Empowerment Zone program. It worsened in 1995 when he vetoed a popular development project near 81st Street and Vermont Avenue, though Waters and some other black leaders also opposed the project. (The City Council ultimately overrode Riordan’s veto to approve the mixed-use development.)

The mayor also has been criticized for appointing too few commissioners who live south of the Santa Monica Freeway, a point Hayden has repeatedly made on the campaign trail. The City Council’s three black members--Nate Holden, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters--have been among the mayor’s most frequent critics, though none have stepped up to endorse Hayden.

Hayden has a liberal record that resonates with many African American activists, though his notoriety for protesting the Vietnam War rankles some black veterans. On the stump, he talks often about poverty and discrimination--during a recent speech he linked Rosa Parks being barred from the front of the bus in 1955 to average citizens in Los Angeles being shut out of City Hall.

“We’re tired of Riordan having such a monopoly on the city and not caring about what we think. He hasn’t done nothing for the black community,” said Drexell Johnson, president of an association representing black contractors.

Political observers say that if anything could kick-start Hayden’s campaign among black and other minority voters, it is the decision expected this week about Williams’ future. While Riordan has stayed silent on the subject of whether the chief should get a second five-year term, the Police Commission he appointed is expected to deny his request for reappointment as early as Monday, and there is a strong public perception that the mayor has long wanted Williams ousted.

Although the chief at first was icy toward Hayden’s endorsement of his bid for another term, they recently appeared together at a public forum. If the black community spends much of the next month rallying around Williams, Hayden could be standing next to the chief collecting support.

Ray and Wardlaw downplayed the importance of Williams as an issue in the mayor’s race. They noted that the mayor is officially removed from the process because the decision on Williams’ future lies in the hands of the Police Commission and can be overturned only by the City Council. And they predicted that the chief’s 66% approval rating (77% among blacks) would not translate into votes at the ballot box.

“What really concerns me is these automatic assumptions that black people react in a Pavlovian way . . . that 99% of the black people want Willie Williams to be reappointed because he’s black, and if he’s not reappointed they’ll . . . vote against the mayor,” Ray said. “Willie Williams is just one of many issues black people will take into consideration when they pull the lever on April 8.”

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this story.