Riordan Sweeps to Reelection

Richard J. Riordan, whose first political campaign landed him in the Los Angeles mayor’s office four years ago, won an overwhelming reelection sweep Tuesday, riding a wave of public optimism to overcome state Sen. Tom Hayden, a dogged rival whose attacks generated ample controversy but little support.

With 74% of the city’s 1,932 precincts reporting, Riordan led with 62.7% of the vote, compared to 33.3% for Hayden.

Riordan’s reelection capped a contest that drew little public interest. Although final turnout numbers were delayed by snafus at several dozen polling places, estimates suggested that roughly 20% of eligible voters cast ballots, an all-time low for a Los Angeles mayoral campaign.

Still, the mayor won commanding approval from voters in nearly every area and ethnic group in Los Angeles. According to a Times exit poll, majorities of men and women, whites and Latinos, residents of the San Fernando Valley, Central City and Westside all went for the mayor. Based on incomplete returns and the Times Poll, Riordan appeared to be breaking 60% of the vote total--the highest percentage any Los Angeles mayoral candidate has won since 1985 and the highest ever achieved by a registered Republican in pursuit of citywide office.

Only black voters cast a majority of ballots for Hayden, a Democrat, the poll found. But their influence on the outcome was small, in part because of a historic surge in Latino participation. For the first time in the history of Los Angeles politics, more Latinos than blacks voted in a citywide election, and they threw their support solidly behind Riordan, who has a long history of philanthropy in Eastside neighborhoods and who campaigned enthusiastically for Latino votes.

Shortly before 11 p.m., Riordan took the stage before a chanting, cheering group of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel and proclaimed victory.

“Tonight we celebrate,” Riordan said in his short victory speech. “Tomorrow we roll up our sleeves and get back to work. Together we will continue to make Los Angeles safer. Together we will reform every neighborhood into a striving and thriving community. Together we will make our schools places of learning and excellence. And together we will make sure that all Angelenos have access to quality jobs.”

Hayden, who arrived at his campaign party to cheers of “Viva Hayden,” did not immediately concede defeat, but did offer his tentative congratulations to Riordan.

“Whatever the outcome is tonight,” he said, “we have to continue that dream, because without dreams we are not human beings. And without dreams, Los Angeles can never be a city of hope, only a place of survival and antagonism.”

His press secretary, Rocky Rushing, said Hayden had accomplished much of what he set out to do.

“No matter what the results show tonight, Tom has answered the call for everyone who’s been left out of Richard Riordan’s administration,” Rushing said. “Environmentalists . . . neighborhood activists . . . gangbangers turned peacemakers, mothers who are frightened to death that their children will be swallowed by street violence. Tom Hayden can walk tall, because he answered their call.”

The results, however, represented a hard slap at Hayden’s effort, suggesting that despite his indefatigable campaign, he never gained much traction with voters. Ace Smith, a consultant to the Riordan campaign, blamed that in part on Hayden’s habit of jumping from issue to issue rather than sticking to a strong central theme.

“You could never figure out from week to week what Tom Hayden was trying to do,” he said. “You couldn’t tell what his message was or what his strategy was.”

In contrast to his 1993 campaign, when Riordan listed dozens of specific proposals for overhauling city government, his rhetoric this time was more general, emphasizing progress and promising more of the same without going into great detail. Riordan touted his success at expanding the Los Angeles Police Department--since he took office, it has grown by just over 2,000 officers--as well as at creating private-sector jobs and holding down taxes.

Under Riordan’s watch, crime has dropped--as it has in major cities across the country--and the city’s economy has shown signs of rebounding. Business leaders report new confidence in the city’s future, as do residents in recent Times polls.

But Hayden and his supporters warned of a schism in the city’s progress. Hayden complained of one-dimensional economic growth, enriching large developers and other corporate interests but failing to provide for the city’s lower-paid workers. He hammered Riordan for opposing a “living wage” ordinance, reminded voters that the mayor had failed to deliver on his 1993 promise of 3,000 more police and accused Riordan of presiding over mismanagement and corruption at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

At one point late in the campaign, Hayden called the mayor a racist, then apologized for the remark, saying it was meant ironically. He continued, however, to argue that the mayor was insensitive to racial issues--a charge that infuriated Riordan and on Tuesday led him to accuse Hayden of having divided the city in an attempt to win the election.

“That’s a legacy that he’s going to have to live with,” Riordan said of his opponent.

A Mayoral Vow to Mend Fences

While voters cast their ballots Tuesday, Riordan worked at home, nursing a cold and working on his election night speech. Interviewed in his elegant personal library, the mayor reflected on the recently completed campaign and considered the task that lies ahead in his coming four years.

Among other things, Riordan said he hoped to mend fences with the City Council, whose members individually have worked with the mayor on a number of projects but who collectively often have opposed him. He also pledged to earn the support of the city’s black residents, many of whom have expressed doubts about the style and content of his leadership, and said he would redouble his commitment to educating the city’s children, a field that has preoccupied Riordan since long before he became mayor.

In his reelection campaign, Riordan won the endorsements of seven of the council’s 15 members, but the council has proved a tricky partner. It battled him on charter reform and balked at his handling of Police Chief Willie L. Williams, among other things.

On Tuesday, Riordan sounded a conciliatory note.

“I have the best interests of the city at heart. I believe every council person has the best interests of the city at heart,” Riordan said. “We owe it to the city to work well together. I will do everything in my power to work closely with the council. I think all of us should look at this election as wiping the slate clean.”

In the interview, Riordan acknowledged that he was disappointed not to have stronger support among the city’s black residents, whose communities he believes he has greatly helped but who overwhelmingly favored Hayden in Tuesday’s election.

“How do I sell South L.A. on what we’ve done?” Riordan asked reflectively. “How do I convince them of everything I have done, of making it safer, working on making education better, cleaning up neighborhoods? How do you get that message out, other than doing it? My theory all along has been that you get out there and do what’s necessary and people realize it. I think, as I go through the city, people do seem to realize that the streets are better, that there’s less graffiti, crime is down, there are more jobs available. Do you have to get on a bully pulpit and tell people about this or just let them see it?”

That notion, the use of the mayor’s office as “bully pulpit,” is one that confounds some of Riordan’s critics and even some of his supporters, who would like to see him articulate a broader moral vision for the city. Riordan’s agenda in the first term incorporated an element of his moral vision, but it was often expressed indirectly, through his belief that creating a business-friendly city government provides the basis for all residents to prosper.

That view tries the patience of some critics, who want quicker results and who, like Hayden, complain that Riordan’s program is better at enriching business than it is at helping the poor. Riordan, however, said he believes he has used the moral powers of his office, not just its management tools.

“Virtually every speech I give is about the tools to compete, access, about the idea that we owe it to every person in the city to help the people who are being left behind,” he said. “My solution, which I think is the only realistic solution, is to work with economically disadvantaged communities on problems which are, in most cases, the same as those facing the rest of the city: safety, higher quality education, cleaner, healthier neighborhoods. In disadvantaged areas, the problems are more pronounced. Therefore, we owe them more attention. This is what I have done all my life . . . I’ve written about and thought about the gap between the haves and have-nots for years. More importantly, I’ve acted on it.”

Contender Wants to Pursue Dream

Hayden, who also paused to reflect on the race Tuesday during a break in his last-minute campaigning, said he believed he had raised serious questions about Riordan’s policies as well as a style of governance, which he described as “invisible,” leaving out the people who need City Hall’s help the most. Those contributions, Hayden said, needed to be made even in a losing effort.

“The question for Mayor Riordan is how does he succeed as mayor in his second term having been rejected by the inner city,” Hayden said, as he sipped a smoothie powered with “juice boost” at a San Fernando Valley strip mall. “The question for me as a [state] senator and as a potential candidate [for mayor] again is how to represent the people who voted for me while changing the minds of the others. We both have our work cut out.”

Hayden said he would seriously consider another bid for the city’s top job in 2001, when Riordan will retire because of term limits. Only unpredictable factors of age and health might deter him, the senator added.

“I want to continue promoting the dream of a livable Los Angeles, and encourage the dreamers to keep organizing,” he said. “If there’s a way to make that dream of a livable L.A. possible in 2001, I’ll do it.”

For now, Hayden will return to the Senate with an agenda based in part on the lessons of his failed mayoral bid.

He has already introduced legislation concerning many of the items he discussed on the campaign trail, including gun control, mobilizing college students to tutor inner-city youths and forcing companies with government contracts to pay benefits to domestic partners. And he will continue to lobby for bills that would ban campaign contributions to MTA board members by companies with agency contracts, as well as to protest publicly against massive development projects.

But the essential questions of neighborhood empowerment and civic leadership are hard to handle from the distance of Sacramento, Hayden said.

“I can legislate. I can pontificate. I can oversee and all that,” he said at a fund-raiser recently. “But this requires somebody to be on the street to nudge people along.”

Although his campaign fell well short of winning, Hayden said he had no regrets about the effort and instead blamed the lopsided race on the absence of any third candidate.

“Mayor Riordan is very lucky. He was able to bluff third candidates out, or he’d be in a runoff for sure,” Hayden said. “Here you have one of the great cities of the world running on empty. The idea of no one challenging the establishment seemed to me a commentary on the void of vision--which puts the city at risk.”

As the senator weighed the prospects of another bid in 2001, he received a mixed message Tuesday from an unlikely source, the psychic whose shop sits next to Hayden’s Sherman Oaks campaign office.

“You have good energy,” palm reader Sophia Pedro told him. You are very strong-minded, very independent. You don’t like handouts from other people.”

She predicted that Hayden would live to age 86 and, in a prediction with political overtones, that he would “have a lot of money surrounding” him before the end of 1997.

And the bottom line? “Throughout your life, there have been obstacles. You came very close to the obstacles, and basically jumped over the obstacles. . . . You have a lot of future obstacles as well.”

Times correspondent Maki Becker contributed to this story.