Riordan and LAUSD: Uh-oh . . .

Sometimes one can’t help but wonder about Mayor Riordan’s mental equipment.

Oh, he’s obviously smart, and has other virtues as well. Think of all those other wealthy fellows who’ve jumped into politics--Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Mike Huffington, Al Checchi--and Riordan looks pretty good. As checkbook politicians go, Riordan was not driven only by ego or quixotic dreams of grandeur. He was not, like Huffington, married to Arianna; not, like Perot, a nut.

Riordan was different. He had a long track record in Los Angeles of civic involvement, philanthropy and power-brokering. Riordan went after an office he knew he could win, assuming leadership in a city where he had wielded influence from behind the scenes for many years. Angelenos got the sense that his heart was in the right place, and usually his head.

Yet Riordan has seen some of his boldest initiatives backfire. The mayor, who early this year complained that the Los Angeles School Board “lacks the mental equipment. . . to run it right,” has declared the education of L.A.’s schoolchildren to be “evil and criminal.” So now he’s announced plans to unseat four Los Angeles Unified School District board members who are up for reelection next year.

So now there’s this feeling of uh-oh, here we go again.

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Riordan, for someone so likable and popular with voters, has had a remarkable capacity to antagonize people he wants to influence. The conventional wisdom holds that Riordan came to the job with the mentality of a CEO, not a politician who had worked his way up, like Tom Bradley. Riordan has clashed often with the council and tried to work around it.

The classic example is charter reform. Riordan, true to his corporate heart, believed the mayor should have more centralized power to control the city functions. He wanted to be able to hire and fire department managers now protected by civil service provisions.

The council, of course, had its own ideas about charter reform and didn’t want to give up so much power. Wary of the council’s plans for an appointed commission, Riordan’s response was to open his checkbook, finance a charter reform initiative and back a slate of candidates.

Riordan was on the ballot himself and won reelection handily. His charter reform slate, however, was rejected and union-backed candidates prevailed. So now our two charter reform commissions are advancing an array of confusing proposals for revamping city government. The political climate has become overheated and personal, especially surrounding the proposals of the elected commission. It is doubly ironic that the council-backed appointed commission, which has gone about its deliberations more quietly, seems more likely to propose reforms palatable to the mayor’s aims.

The worst scenario for Riordan would be for voters to struggle with the confusion he created and then adopt reforms that he loathes. Well, there is one worse scenario: that charter reform winds up as such a fiasco that it pushes the Valley secession movement to the ballot, creating a painfully divisive political fight. This is not the legacy Riordan wants.

Now Riordan has targeted school board members, and it’s easy to see why--they seem like such a worthwhile and slow-moving target. Here was what Riordan said when he rankled the board earlier this year:

“You have seven members who are elected by district, who are more worried about their own ethnic group, their own districts . . . than they are about children. These are wannabe politicians. The minute they’re elected, they’re thinking about running for City Council or what have you . . . They don’t have the mental equipment, the experience equipment, to run it right.”

These are popular sentiments, and I share several. But funny thing about the school board. Over the last 20 years or so, I can’t recall a time when it, as a body, has had a good reputation. Educational performance in California public schools has faltered since the effects of Proposition 13 took hold.

The downward trend has been exacerbated in L.A. by an exodus of more affluent families to private schools and other districts and a huge influx of immigrants who don’t speak English at home. Oh, and let’s not forget the growth and increasing violence of young gangsters. It is often hard to define success or failure in such circumstances by a number on a standardized test.

Bashing the L.A. schools--the board, the bureaucracy, the principals, the teachers--has long been an easy thing to do, which is not to say they don’t sometimes have it coming. Yet while the school system is routinely portrayed as a mess, those board members who seek higher office have a way of getting elected.

Mayor Riordan, I hope, wasn’t surprised that his declaration of war on the school board was answered Tuesday by a phalanx of African American leaders rallying around board member Barbara Boudreaux. The Rev. Robert Holt, chaplain for the Black American Political Assn. of California, spoke as if addressing Riordan: “We object to your colonial mentality and your unmitigated gall in trying to select our leader.”

This is just the start, and Riordan and his task force are trying to identify candidates willing to pursue these $24,000-a-year posts. Who would be the best and brightest possible candidates? Riordan’s task force includes former UCLA Chancellor Charles Young. Would he be willing to tackle lower education? Mike Roos heads the LEARN program, so how about him? The mayor’s old pal Michael Milken is now making waves in education with his Knowledge Universe company. Would he be interested? How about Riordan himself?

This could be somebody’s notion of a Dream Team, even if they are all white males. Surely they would possess the mental equipment and the experience to run it right, wouldn’t they? Or is the truth that a new cast of characters wouldn’t make much of a difference, because the district is just too damn big, the problems too large, the standards of measurement too simplistic?

Some time ago I wrote wistfully of how I had wished the mayor had scotched the Valleyistas early on. The secession movement was a distraction in L.A’s great civic debate because the problems of City Hall pale next to the troubles of the LAUSD. City government is far more representational and more effective than that of the schools. Yet for some reason, secession and charter reform eclipsed the movement to bust up the LAUSD.

Where are those school breakup petitions, anyway?

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.