No-Show by the Mayor a Tough Lesson for Teens

In January, Sharon Ronen, 17, tracked down Mayor Richard Riordan and personally asked him if he would appear at a city election candidates forum sponsored by her Van Nuys High School politics group.

Sure, the mayor said, he’d be interested if his schedule permitted. “I was very excited,” said Ronen, president of the school’s chapter of the Junior State of America.

Jump forward to last Monday night, in the Van Nuys High gym. Almost 300 students, parents, teachers and community residents were on hand, as were candidates for the school board and the mayor’s opponent, state Sen. Tom Hayden. But no Riordan.

I wasn’t surprised. The young men and women from the San Fernando Valley high school had alerted me a few weeks before that they were having trouble nailing down Riordan to appear with his foe. They said they couldn’t understand it.

Of course not. What they don’t teach in high school government classes are the real rules of the game, and an unbreakable one is that front-runners don’t debate, because they don’t want to give opponents publicity or risk a fatal mistake.

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As I walked through the campus Monday night, I thought of the opportunity Riordan was missing.

Banners and ribbons gave the gym the look of a political meeting. A rostrum had been placed in the center of the floor, facing the bleachers. The crowd was slowly drifting in, pausing to sample the soft drinks and chocolate cake on sale in the lobby.

It was election campaigning at its best--a bunch of concerned people coming together without the hype, phoniness and big bucks that have soured so many Americans on the political process.

I looked up Junior State President Ronen and John Lim, 18, who helped coordinate the event. We sat down on the bleachers, and I listened to the frustrating details of their failed efforts to bring the mayor to their forum.

As planning for the event began in January, Ronen learned that Riordan was speaking to a group of business people meeting in a furniture store on Sepulveda Boulevard. She found the store and cornered Riordan on his way out. He told her to contact his San Fernando Valley office to set it up.

That office shifted her to the Riordan campaign headquarters, where press aide Todd Harris asked for the request in writing, by fax. “‘It started out real positively,” she said. “He said it was looking good, he’d get back to us. He said nothing was scheduled for that evening.”

But after almost two months, the students still had not obtained a confirmation. They couldn’t use the school auditorium until 7 p.m. The school’s performing arts magnet needed it for a dress rehearsal until then.

But the Riordan camp said 6 p.m. or nothing. “It’s a confusing, frustrating business,” said Ronen. “I think some of the politicians don’t believe in us or think of a lot of us as being 18. I think they don’t give us the respect we deserve.”

Campaign spokesman Harris replied that the mayor wanted to appear but that he had a 7 p.m. “private function, a family function” that he had to attend.

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Maybe that’s true. But I’ve been to a lot of family functions, and relatives usually don’t mind if you’re late unless it’s a wedding, christening, bar mitzvah or funeral.

The fact is, Riordan has had only one debate with Hayden and turned down several other invitations.

This refusal was especially unfortunate. A Riordan appearance at Van Nuys High School would have been a great contribution to the campaign, and to the school.

The students would have participated in the democratic process, watching the two mayoral candidates debate the issues, and then asking them questions.

Television stations would have sent crews to cover the rare joint appearance. Even a few sound bites would have reminded Angelenos of the April 8 election and pointed up differences between Hayden and Riordan.

Such coverage would have also brought the city the seldom-delivered message that positive deeds are done in our public schools, accomplished by serious students.

Instead, Mayor Riordan stuck with the front-runner’s no-debate rule--and the advice of cynical political hacks--on a night when he should have thrown the rule book away.