D-Day for 2 Visions of L.A.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) ended his maverick mayoral campaign Monday with an optimistic vision of a vibrant riverfront connecting Los Angeles’ disparate ethnic communities and a dire warning about the influence of special interest money on local politics.

The twin themes underscored the rationale for Hayden’s three-month sprint in pursuit of the city’s top job: He wants to make L.A. “more livable,” and halt what he sees as a “power grab” by incumbent Mayor Richard Riordan and his wealthy “business friends.”

“The old civil rights and biblical phrase, ‘Down by the riverside,’ is still very powerful,” the onetime student activist-turned-watchdog state legislator said as he stood between the concrete walls that enclose the Los Angeles River. Hayden opposes the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to increase the height of the concrete flood channel, which encloses most of the 58-mile river. Instead, he backs a proposal by several environmental groups to restore much of the river to a natural state and line its banks with a network of parks and cafes.

“L.A. is supposed to be a city of dreamers. We spin the dreams for the world, and yet we don’t have enough dreams for ourselves. . . . I don’t think Los Angeles can go without a positive dream.”

But Hayden did not let the final day pass without an attack on his opponent, standing on a corner outside the Century City headquarters of Apollo Advisors, an investment company that employs several alumni of Michael Milken’s junk bond trading operation at the now-dissolved firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert and that has contributed $25,000 to Riordan’s charter reform campaign.

“In his view, City Hall is like a board room,” Hayden said as supporters stood behind him holding signs with his campaign slogan, ‘L.A. not for $ale.’ “He views it as Riordan Inc.”

Crisscrossing the city in the mini-school bus he calls his “mobile headquarters,” Hayden and his wife, actress Barbara Williams, also shook hands with billiards players and ballroom dancers at Angelus Plaza, a Downtown apartment complex of senior citizens, and spent an hour fielding obnoxious questions on “Real Radio,” a shock-talk station.

It was Williams’ most high-profile day on the campaign trail, and it was a little bit rocky.

After posing for “First Family” portraits with Hayden and their two dogs, Henry and Lobo, Williams was dragged into the Los Angeles River by the pooches--suede shoes and all. She rushed home to switch from a gray business suit into a violet one--and don a new pair of pumps--then met her candidate husband at the senior citizens center just in time to be handed the microphone for a rendition of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

But she forgot the words halfway through.

“I haven’t sung that song since I was 8 years old,” she apologized to the crowd. Regarding her earlier stumble, she joked with reporters that she was just “method acting,” preparing for her upcoming role in a Disney film where she will portray an anthropologist who dies of river fever doing research in New Guinea.

With a health dose of dramatic flair and plenty of gaffes, Hayden’s finale was an apt reprise of his eclectic campaign, a street-level attempt to bring together an unlikely coalition.

Late Friday, he was talking to transvestites in West Hollywood, early Sunday morning he was preaching at a Baptist church near Watts. Two hours later, he was atop Pacific Palisades, promising to preserve homeowners rights.

He showed up at 5 a.m. to talk to a yard full of the city’s garbage truck drivers. He led a caravan along four miles of dirt road to rally with environmentalists about preserving the Santa Monica Mountains. He toured housing projects with former gang leaders. He stopped for coffee at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Encino and passed out fliers to movie-goers in Westwood, then zipped across town to meet with Filipino veterans and Chinese American businessmen.

He toted a life-size cardboard cutout of the mayor with him to the podium of a liberal Reform temple in the San Fernando Valley, where Purim services are marked by the rabbi standing on a table. He marched behind a “unity” banner with members of the Nation of Islam. He tried out his beginning Spanish--”Yo soy candidato para alcalde” (I am a candidate for mayor)--on Latino immigrants, a community where the rate of citizenship is historically low.

“You bring all these people together and it’s worse than the Tower of Babel,” Hayden told one Westside Democratic club. “Poor Rodney King asked the right question, and we gave him an answer. He asked, ‘Please, can’t we get along?’ The answer is no, not without a good mayor.”

Hayden’s cadre of loyal campaigners is like a mini-version of the Los Angeles he’d like to lead.

There’s actor Sean Penn, who lent his chic Santa Monica supper club for a $1,000-a-plate dinner and $100-a-ticket concert featuring Sheryl Crow. There’s Tim Carpenter, a veteran of the quixotic presidential quests of Jesse Jackson and Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., who treks up from Orange County every day and is on a one-man mission to sell 2 million bumper stickers at a $1 a pop to match Riordan’s campaign war chest.

And then there’s Luis Acosta, a city sanitation worker who volunteered nights and weekends, then took more than a week of vacation time to help Hayden. Acosta’s father was laid off when Riordan helped restructure Mattel and the company moved its factories south of the border; he says he doesn’t want the same to happen to him.

Hayden’s political director is actually a biologist, an Ensenada-born cancer researcher whom the candidate met during the UCLA hunger strike for Chicano studies. His driver jokes that he can’t stand freeway traffic because it reminds him of prison.

Even his speeches are a kind of melting pot, often mixing Irish humor with Jewish storytelling or Native American mythology.

At the Crow concert, he explained why he was running for mayor by outlining what the Indians see as the stages of life: The eagle, who is full of vision. The coyote, who competes fiercely to succeed. The bear, who looks out for others. And the white buffalo, who dispenses wisdom.

“When you get to Los Angeles, it’s just a bunch of coyotes--young eagles waiting on tables everywhere, but coyotes are running things,” he said. “The bear is very good at Neighborhood Watch. People don’t really mess around with the bear.

“I’m just trying to be a bear,” he added. “I’m just trying to be a steward.”

But for all his talk of “weaving the city’s racial threads into a harmonious garment,” Hayden has had a hard time getting any momentum going, in part because he switches issues as often as he changes clothes.

While Riordan has stuck to a simple three-pronged message--public safety, economic development and education--Hayden has plucked a different topic nearly every day: The subway scandal. Gun control. School dropouts. Gang truces. The mayor’s role in the ouster of Police Chief Willie L. Williams. Riordan’s veto of the living-wage ordinance. The dismantling of Rebuild L.A. The tax subsidies for DreamWorks SKG. The expansion of Universal Studios. School reform. Charter reform. Campaign finance reform.

Early on, he even had a news conference at Dodger Stadium, accusing the mayor of triggering Peter O’Malley’s decision to sell the city’s beloved baseball team.

Regardless of the specifics, however, Hayden’s speeches typically have the same underpinnings: He wants to empower neighborhoods so they feel connected to City Hall, and help warring groups work peacefully with one another.

He rarely ends a meeting without mentioning his recent visit to a Toluca Lake bowling alley, where he found tense lanes between the gay and lesbian bowling league and the “straight” bowling league. The gay bowlers were happy, Hayden says, but the “straight” bowlers didn’t like being defined by their sexuality, just because they happened to be next to a group that had chosen to do so.

“In Tom Hayden’s Los Angeles,” he promises, “everybody will bowl in peace.”