Riordan Rides High With Unlikely Alliance

Flying to Washington on Sunday, Mayor Richard Riordan carried no briefing books or policy papers; he was armed with a script for a radio theater episode he’d been asked to perform in. His hand-held tape recorder was not for shooting off memos; it contained a Jason Robards drama that Riordan praised and said would make a great movie.

He talked about history, not current events. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d shared a dais with the vice president of the United States; Riordan didn’t mention it.

If Los Angeles’s forcefully nonpartisan, stridently private mayor harbored any reservations about the week ahead in the nation’s bitterly partisan, prying capital amid its latest scandal, he didn’t show it.

“Why are you headed to Washington?” one passenger asked.

“To steal some money and take it back to Los Angeles,” Riordan answered.

The mayor, flying economy class, grinned as a few well-wishers recognized him. He chatted with fellow passengers, turned down an offer of free champagne from the flight attendant and then popped on his headphones and lapsed back into the odd anonymity that he enjoys even after five years at the helm of the nation’s second-largest city.

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Riordan defies easy definition. He’s a Republican, but his staff and friends include well-known Democrats. And he cultivates an anti-political image, disdaining the rough-and-tumble of political debate as inefficient and divisive. Yet Riordan’s political instincts are deceptively strong, leaving him well at home in Washington, where he quietly has built a solid, bipartisan base of support.

Since coming to the mayor’s office in 1993, Riordan has cultivated a productive relationship with President Clinton. The result has helped both men.

Riordan secured billions of dollars in federal aid to rebuild the city after the 1992 riots and again after the 1994 earthquake. Just last month, the city nabbed an empowerment zone, a prize denied it two years ago after local officials submitted a much derided application; it eventually came to Los Angeles largely because of Riordan’s persistent pursuit. Clinton, meanwhile, has used his ties to the Los Angeles mayor to affirm his place at the American center and to head off criticism in California’s largest city.

Today, both leaders stand at crossroads, though very different ones. While Clinton’s presidency appears to teeter on the experience and testimony of a former intern, Riordan debates a move he never thought he’d make but now just might: a run for governor of California.

True to his reputation as a tough negotiator, Riordan knows there’s no point in tipping his hand too soon. Each politician, business executive and influential leader who calls him now to offer encouragement is one more arrow in the mayor’s quiver. He’s collecting them one at a time even as he debates whether to use them.

All of which puts Washington, and particularly the White House, in an interesting fix. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are closer ideologically to Riordan--a centrist who supports abortion rights and some gun control measures as well as the death penalty and limited taxes, but whose passions are for efficiency and education--than to the Democrats so far in the race.

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Gore presumably would relish Riordan’s support in the 2000 presidential campaign, and has some reason to think he might get it. Riordan has backed Democrats, notably Sen. Dianne Feinstein, before, and the mayor’s best friend, lawyer-investor William Wardlaw, already is working to line up support for the vice president.

Likewise, any word of encouragement or even mild support for Riordan from the White House could help the mayor capture the broad center of California voters. The president and vice president could never be expected to endorse a Republican in a partisan race, but they could repeat their approach to the 1993 mayor’s race in Los Angeles, when Clinton offered Riordan a chance to join him at a White House press conference in the heart of the campaign. That telegraphed the president’s friendship with the mayor without offering an explicit endorsement--valuable help as Riordan was facing Democratic challenger Tom Hayden in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

Even such subtle cues could bolster Riordan’s fate in the governor’s race, where he would vie with Al Checchi for the support of California’s centrist voters. Gray Davis can count on the support of many California liberals, and state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren brings hard-core conservatives with him. A few appearances with the tenaciously popular Clinton team might put Riordan over the top.

When all those ideas are put to Riordan, he smiles impishly. Will he run? he was asked for the umpteenth time.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said. Then he put his headphones on and went back to his radio drama.