A Dodger of Politics and Controversy

Goodbye Peter O’Malley. Hello Rupert Murdoch and welcome to the LAPL, the Los Angeles Political League, where the game was too rough for O’Malley, but it’s probably just right for a tough and cunning man like you.

It’s here, on the playing fields of the LAPL, that O’Malley backed down in a fight for his dream, construction of a football stadium to house a National Football League franchise, next to the Dodger Stadium baseball field.

This is where he learned that politics is a cruel and unforgiving business, with none of the clubby image that baseball projects.

Baseball likes to romanticize a loser. In politics, a loser is simply a loser. People walk away from one for fear the condition might spread.

Then they start looking for a winner.

And that’s what was happening Tuesday in one of the Los Angeles Political League’s most historic and ornate venues, the L.A. City Council chambers, where the politicians began talking about Murdoch, whose international media company, News Corp., controls the Fox television network and several cable networks, among other properties.

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Tuesday morning, with news of the possible Murdoch purchase on the front page of the paper and blaring over the radio, I walked over to the council chambers to check on the reaction of the hardened political pros who work there.

On the right side of the room, I saw Councilman Richard Alatorre, restlessly standing near his desk.

His voice was characteristically raspy as he delivered an insightful but profane street-level commentary on winning and losing in the below-the-belt combat of local politics.

O’Malley needed City Council approval of ordinances to build a football stadium and to remodel the baseball park. But he was opposed by two council members representing the area around Dodger Stadium, Mike Hernandez and Jackie Goldberg, who were backed by neighborhood groups.

“As smart as O’Malley is,” Alatorre said, “he didn’t have anyone in his operation who understands politics. He’s apolitical. It’s amazing how apolitical he is.”

Another weakness, said Alatorre, is that O’Malley “doesn’t like controversy.”

Later in the day, I talked to one of the neighborhood opponents of O’Malley’s plan. Attorney Mike Kogan, like many other residents of the Echo Park neighborhood, objected to increased traffic from the proposed stadium--and to what they termed O’Malley’s insensitivity to their complaints.

Kogan, who happens to be a Dodger season ticket-holder, had hosted a neighborhood meeting last year and O’Malley attended it. The session was heated. Residents vowed to lay down in front of the bulldozers clearing land for the stadium. To his credit, O’Malley came to the meeting. But, Kogan said, the Dodgers’ boss responded to the community’s emotion without any visible emotion of his own. He was, said Kogan, “formal and plastic,” showing feeling only when Kogan compared him to George Steinbrenner, the controversial and heavily criticized owner of the New York Yankees. “That got his attention,” Kogan said. “He doesn’t want to be disliked.”

For a politician, this kind of abuse is routine. It’s also part of the life of developers, builders and anyone else who must win the support of angry neighbors and reluctant lawmakers.

If O’Malley was really interested in winning the fight, this was time for hardball, for O’Malley to engage in a painful but real dialogue with the neighbors. He could have mobilized allies, such as organized labor, and called in some of his political markers.

Alatorre figures he could have won. But there was a slight problem. “O’Malley,” growled Alatorre, “is too much of a gentleman.”

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In some circles, that’s a compliment, but not in mine.

I like people who fight for what they believe in, who have the guts to take abuse from angry neighbors. Some people call that kind of community opposition obstructionism. A better word is democracy.

O’Malley has been all but canonized by his boosters in L.A. for his timidity. They don’t mention his reluctance to stand up against obstructionist team owners during the last baseball strike--an attitude that helped prolong that destructive action.

From what I’ve read, Murdoch is no gentleman, at least in business.

And if he gets the Dodgers because O’Malley has abandoned the field, L.A. will pay.

Murdoch, no doubt, will want to remodel Dodger Stadium, put in luxury boxes, reduce the number of cheap seats, raise the prices. Maybe he’ll want a football stadium too, or will decide to tear down Dodger Stadium and build a combination football-baseball super-stadium.

He’ll need city permission for much of that, but unlike O’Malley, Murdoch has shown he knows how to win in City Hall. “He’ll play hardball and he’ll get good people around him,” said Alatorre, and “two or three people” on the council won’t be able to stop him, as they halted O’Malley.

It wasn’t just idle generosity that prompted Murdoch to give $49,000 to Mayor Richard Riordan’s campaign this year to create a commission to rewrite the City Charter.

This man knows you’re supposed to play the game to win.