Sports Deals Transforming L.A.’s Politics

As a pair of sports projects wind their way through the corridors of Los Angeles power, they are transforming some of the city’s previously reliable political relationships, bringing onetime adversaries into new alliances and splitting what had seemed to be durable allegiances.

The proposals--one to bring football back to Los Angeles, the other to build a downtown arena for the Lakers and Kings--are both mammoth projects with significant economic implications for city government. As a result, they have been intensely debated, and the debates have sometimes gotten personal.

The toll has rippled through City Hall, breaking apart old allies such as Mayor Richard Riordan and City Councilman Joel Wachs, widening a rift between Wachs and mayoral advisor Steven Soboroff into a torrent of personal abuse and rupturing the long friendship between Riordan and former aide and law partner Michael Keeley.

At the same time, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, once a reliable Riordan foe, has found common ground with his old adversary and patched together a solid alliance with council President John Ferraro at the same time that he has managed to antagonize another colleague, Rita Walters.

There is more than friendship at stake in all this. This is a city unusually dependent on the strength of personal ties, in part because no political party structure exists to provide a framework of allegiances and adversaries. What’s more, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and arena proposals are about more than sports. They are about the issues that define the city: development and growth.

As a result, the changing dynamics at City Hall have been keenly felt and have reset Los Angeles’ table of loyalties. And they are offering the first glimmer of the mayor’s race in 2001, when term limits will keep Riordan from running, opening the field to a growing crowd of possible successors and heightening the tension between potential opponents.

Before the sports deals, Wachs was considered a relatively loyal mayoral ally. His involvement in the downtown arena, however, has left him on the outs with some of those closest to Riordan and his big-business supporters, who publicly accepted Wachs’ amended arena proposal, but who privately groused that the episode said more about the councilman’s political ambitions than the project’s merits.

Soboroff was particularly incensed. During the Jewish High Holy Days, he dashed off a confidential memorandum to Keeley, a former Riordan protege who advised Wachs on the arena negotiations. Soboroff’s memo cast Wachs as more than just an adversary; it suggested that the councilman had violated the tenets of their common Jewish faith.

“On Yom Kippur, respected throughout the secular and Jewish world as the most sacred Jewish day, when we are to repent and ask forgiveness, Joel Wachs is on TV doing the opposite (if you consider lying something to ask forgiveness for),” Soboroff wrote. He then proceeded to list what he said were lies told by Wachs and concluded by reminding Keeley of his own accomplishments as parks and recreation commissioner and Riordan advisor.

“Mike, I’ve got 375 parks and 900 schools that need fixing. I’ve got an Alameda Corridor that TRUTHFULLY will bring billions to L.A. and tens of thousands of jobs,” Soboroff wrote. “So I don’t have the time, or see the need, to crusade against the lies of Team Wachs.”

Other Riordan confidants winced at Soboroff’s note, worrying that its attack on Wachs’ faith and its overbearing tone would serve little purpose, particularly when directed against a councilman who generally sides with the mayor.

For his part, Wachs seemed stunned, not just by the memo but by the animosity from Riordan’s point man on the arena.

“I was really surprised that I would get resistance from them,” Wachs said last week, after the council approved his amended arena deal. “I was even more surprised at the anger. There was real resentment.”

In part, that resentment grew out of Wachs’ handling of the issue. He wasted few opportunities to draw attention to his efforts, and he often personalized his criticism of Soboroff by suggesting that the deal he struck was a taxpayer giveaway to billionaire developers.

Wachs irritated not just Soboroff but the mayor, who publicly stayed away from the issue--saying his ownership of a downtown restaurant created a conflict of interest--but who complained about Wachs’ activity and openly opposed the councilman’s proposal to put new stadium construction measures before the voters.

That set the stage for what in many ways is the most startling rupture to grow out of the debate, the break between Riordan and Keeley. Keeley worked for Riordan at the mayor’s old law firm and later was considered one of the brightest and most aggressive members of the mayor’s staff. When Keeley got into trouble with the council over leaking a confidential city attorney document, Riordan accepted his resignation, but only after agonizing over the issue for days.

But when Keeley agreed to advise Wachs on the arena deal, Riordan blew his top. He fired off a crisp note to Keeley, effectively accusing him of betrayal. Keeley lashed back with his own veiled criticism of his former mentor. The two men, once close friends, now do not speak to each other.

Still, not all of the fallout from the sports deals has been divisive.

In fact, one of City Hall’s most curious developments in recent months has been the gradual creation of a working relationship between Riordan and Ridley-Thomas.

Theirs is an unlikely alliance: Ridley-Thomas is a liberal, a veteran of community organizing and civil rights; Riordan is a Republican businessman who made millions in venture capital before trying his hand in government four years ago.

From the start, Ridley-Thomas was skeptical of the new mayor. He criticized Riordan’s approach to city business, implied that the mayor was behind efforts to discredit then-Police Chief Willie L. Williams and frequently voted against Riordan on issues before the council, including a politically divisive development project in South-Central.

Today, the two men still have their differences but more often move in tandem.

Riordan has lent his name and energy to the effort to secure a football team for the Coliseum, the historic facility in the heart of Ridley-Thomas’ council district. And Ridley-Thomas backed Riordan on the arena proposal--not coincidentally a project being developed by the same businessmen working with the councilman on the Coliseum.

Their mutual support has helped both men, giving the Riordan administration an unexpected ally in the arena debate, not to mention the visible support of one of the city’s most recognized African American politicians. In return, Ridley-Thomas has gotten the benefit of Riordan’s name recognition and credibility in the business community, both of which the councilman said have been helpful as he courts the support of National Football League owners and others.

“The relationship is a much more favorable one,” the councilman said. “I’d like to think that neither of us feels compromised by that.”

Ridley-Thomas’ efforts also have drawn the happy backing of council President Ferraro, who often differs with the councilman on ideological issues, but who played football in the Coliseum as a USC All-American and who welcomes the effort to bring professional sports back to the stadium.

But Ridley-Thomas’ growing relationship with Riordan also has attracted the attention--and in some cases, anger--of some of his colleagues. Walters, perhaps Riordan’s fiercest council opponent, was unhappy with her colleague’s support of the arena, which is scheduled to be built in her 9th District.

At one point, Walters turned to Ridley-Thomas and demanded: “Since when did you become the council person for the 9th District?”

Underlying much of the movement at City Hall are the early maneuverings for the 2001 mayor’s race. Riordan is barred from seeking a third term, and already the political landscape is becoming cluttered with would-be successors, among them Soboroff, Wachs and Ridley-Thomas.

“This dispute between Wachs and Soboroff,” said one political observer, “is a little bit about pride and a lot about running for mayor. It’s barely even related to the arena.”

Others agree, attributing much of the tension over the arena to the competing interests of those two players. Most agree Wachs out-slugged Soboroff in that contest, taking the original deal, improving it and parlaying it into a populist platform for seeking the city’s top office.

Although Soboroff was not available for comment, Wachs does not dispute that he may ask voters to consider his role in the arena deal when they decide whom to elect as Los Angeles’ next mayor.

“Why not judge people on what they do?” he asked. “I want my record to be one that is judged.”

Similarly, even as Ridley-Thomas campaigns for the Coliseum, he weighs the next campaign. If he runs for mayor, the councilman would undoubtedly benefit from his improving ties with the city’s business leaders--a benefit that he might reap even if the Coliseum does not draw a new football team.

Asked last week about his mayoral ambitions, Ridley-Thomas arched an eyebrow, smiled and leaned forward in his chair.

“It’s a consideration,” he said. “It’s not a preoccupation.”