A Steamy Saga Played Out by Strange Bedfellows

Open wide, L.A. Here comes your castor oil, your lumpy oatmeal, your morning roughage.

This column is good for you.

This column is about . . . charter reform.

What did you expect to hear? That charter reform is a swashbuckling saga of riches beyond your wildest dreams, of treachery and vendettas?

Well, it is that, too, in a pinstriped fashion. Two years in the making, millions of dollars in the selling, charter reform has in its wake promises made and broken, coalitions riven, allegiances sundered--all waiting for you at the polls on Tuesday.

I tried writing charter reform as fairy tale: King Erwin of Electi and King George of Appointi, monarchs of the once-warring charter commission kingdoms, hoping to join their nations with the marriage of their offspring, but thwarted by the Coven of a Dozen.

Didn’t work.

Then I tried writing it as grand opera: Riccardo il Mayore waging outnumbered swordplay with his golden saber Exchequer against the council of five-and-ten consiglieri, until Riccardo’s condottieri from the Banco di Molto Lire arrive to turn the tide of battle.

No good either.

There’s only one parable for writing charter reform, and that’s as U.S. foreign policy. You know the formula: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend. If you hate the guy I hate, you’re all right with me.”

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There are cities where politics is both entertainment and contact sport. (“Zoning commission face-off! Film at 11!”) Not here. Here, for the most part, people want local government to be like the hot-water tap or the computer: Turn it on, it works, turn it off, don’t think about it until you need it again.

For two years now, a few civic volunteers have been thinking about little else. Charter reform was not pretty. Threats were leveled, backs were stabbed, principles accommodated and principles discarded. What survives is a charter for the 21st century, in language an eighth-grader can understand, with a preamble that a 12th-grader composed in an essay contest.

A reworking was decades overdue, although everyone had a different reason why. Sam Yorty told me last year, “Any man who reads beyond the second paragraph of the Los Angeles City Charter would be out of his mind to run for mayor,” and still he ran three times.

The civic work done, the sales job is in full cry. Like Wheaties, it’s now come down to endorsements, lazy man’s democracy: Can’t be bothered with substance? Who do you like? Who can’t you stand? Here’s a brief team roster:

God and Mammon: God seems to be pleased. Mammon took more persuading. An auxiliary bishop of the L.A. archdiocese, First AME Church, sundry rabbis and ministers side with the City of Angels’ rewrite. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch--ordinarily anything he’s for, like newspaper photos of topless women and ballplayer salaries that drive up ticket prices for the little guy, I’m against. Odd, too, that his first oar in our civic waters was giving $200K to charter reform through some murky Delaware corporation.

Strange bedfellows: Tom Hayden, Mr. Civic Progressivism, and Paula Boland, the Rage that Launched a Thousand Secession Petitions, hate the proposed charter; Hayden thinks it hands too much power to the mayor, Boland too little.

Labor and management: split decision. Some labor organizations like charter reform for setting the “living wage” in concrete. But two big ones--the local Service Employees International and the Police Protective League--just did an about-face and now oppose it.

As for management, a coalition of CEOs--many of whom don’t even live in L.A., only make their money here--support it now that they’ve gotten their deal-breaker broken: no elected neighborhood councils. Easier to persuade an elected mayor and City Council than dozens of gadflies who actually live in the parts of town they’d make policy for.

The Burbs: Cautious support from Secesh elements in the Valley, but defiance from Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. and longshoremen who work in his divorce-minded San Pedro district.

City Hall: Like Reagan vs. Congress, the mayor has higher approval ratings than the council, although members are popular in districts that keep electing them. The mayor has opened his checkbook and his friends’ to get charter reform passed, which infuriates the council. Twelve of its 15 say no, and some have reportedly leaned on their courtiers: Oppose it or else. But while they fret that charter reform means it’s back to 1930s-style corruption and bossism, the average Joe trying to get a stop sign at the corner is stymied not by corruption but inefficiency, and can’t believe charter reform could make matters worse.

Star turn: In the biggest endorsement since Bob Dole plumped for Viagra, charter reform’s top fan is Magic Johnson, whose mailers read, “This one’s a slam dunk.”

Diet guru du jour: No one sought out a diet expert’s endorsement, but surely any one of them would have been pleased to put his name on a slimming regimen that can shed nearly 400 pages of ugly fat in two years--and keep it off.

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Patt Morrison’s column runs Fridays. She substitutes today for Al Martinez, who is ill. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.