L.A.’s Political Troika

Back in 1996, when then-Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department Bernard C. Parks shocked many local leaders by effectively and very publicly announcing his campaign to unseat his boss, Willie Williams, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky sat on the same dais and cheered.

Bill Wardlaw was not there that night, but when he heard the details, he smiled, and quietly began working to make Parks’ dream come true.

That’s typical for these three men: Over the years, they have stood by one another, boosting one another to success, usually with Yaroslavsky and Parks in the limelight and Wardlaw just offstage. All three are well-known to Los Angeles insiders, but less widely recognized is how the friendship between them has shaped recent Los Angeles history and may chart its immediate future.

Together, they form a governing troika, a rarity in a city with few lasting political allegiances and even fewer enduring political friendships. To be sure, there are plenty of other important and rising forces in Los Angeles politics--City Atty. James Hahn and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa come to mind--but the reach, success and promise of the Wardlaw-Parks-Yaroslavsky friendship gives it special significance.

They are profoundly different and disconcertingly similar men.

Their detractors consider Parks and Wardlaw ruthless; Yaroslavsky is seen as more affable, more likable, but his opponents snicker that he is timid. Parks and Wardlaw are Roman Catholics; Yaroslavsky is Jewish. Wardlaw and Yaroslavsky are white, Parks is black.

Usually, these would not be inconsequential differences, but in the case of this trio they are subsumed by a mutual aspiration for power and a shared determination to use that power in order to shape Los Angeles.

Wardlaw is probably Los Angeles’ most feared political power-broker, best friend of Mayor Richard Riordan, wealthy lawyer and centrist Democratic Party insider. Wardlaw is a man with enough pull to call up the White House and drop by while he’s in town.

Parks, having landed in the job he has spent his professional life fighting for, now commands an armed force of nearly 10,000 men and women, a position so powerful that one of his predecessors, Ed Davis, declined to give it up to run for mayor, because--in his view--it would have meant a step down.

Yaroslavsky presides unchallenged over one of the nation’s most complicated, diverse and richest constituencies, a swath of West Los Angeles that stretches from the beach mansions of Malibu to the new immigrant communities of Silver Lake and that gives him a firm base from which to launch a run for mayor in 2001.

Mutual Alliance

Individually, each is a force in Los Angeles government and politics. Together, they have reinforced one another’s lives and careers. Yaroslavsky helped bail out Parks when the then-assistant chief’s police career was in danger and his departure from the LAPD seemed imminent. Parks has delivered on Riordan’s law enforcement agenda and thus promoted Wardlaw’s interests. Wardlaw backed Parks for chief and now broadly hints that he is ready to support Yaroslavsky should he run for mayor.

Naturally, theirs is a friendship that also inspires a mixture of suspicion and envy.

Some observers question whether Wardlaw’s political judgment is all it’s cracked up to be, whether Parks is too stubborn to listen to constructive criticism and whether Yaroslavsky has the fire in the belly to lead.

“Just because they like each other,” said one person close to Hahn, who already is running for mayor, “doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”

Of the three, Parks perhaps is the best known. But as inevitable as it seems in retrospect, Parks’ rise to the head of one of the nation’s important law enforcement agencies was not always a smooth one.

Yaroslavsky and Parks were traveling together in Germany in 1994 when then-Chief Williams decided to pull the plug on his subordinate. At a hastily called news conference just after Parks’ return--but before speaking to Parks personally--Williams announced that he was demoting Parks, who was then the LAPD’s head of operations. Parks was furious, and Yaroslavsky was there for him.

“I think what was done to him was outrageous, and the way it was done was outrageous,” Yaroslavsky said recently. “The first thing I did was sit down with [Parks] and say: Why do you want to stay, given the way you’ve been treated. . . . He said the LAPD was his life, and he wasn’t going to walk away from it.”

So Yaroslavsky, then the chairman of the council’s Budget Committee, leaped into action. He led a campaign to secure Parks’ salary and pension despite the demotion, and his virulent criticism of Williams slowly spread, drawing out other critics and eventually contributing to the dissatisfaction with the chief’s performance.

Having decided to stay, Parks elected to push for the department’s top job, a post he had long coveted and narrowly failed to win in 1993, when the Police Commission voted instead to pick Williams. This time, it was Wardlaw who helped give him a boost.

As Riordan weighed his choices to succeed Williams, it gradually boiled down to two leading candidates, Parks and Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, a popular and respected veteran of the department. Riordan turned to many people as he weighed that decision, probably the most important personnel move he would make as mayor. But ultimately the advice he most relies upon is Wardlaw’s. And Wardlaw was an unabashed Parks booster.

Wardlaw and Parks met in 1991, when Parks was a candidate to succeed the embattled Chief Daryl F. Gates. Riordan, then still a private citizen but an active one, already knew Parks, and the mayor-to-be offered to help the deputy chief prepare for the exam.

“Dick offered to prepare Bernard for his orals for the police chief job,” Wardlaw said. “So he asked me to get some people together to work with him.”

“They put me through a massive, mock oral,” Parks said.

Run by Wardlaw, it had to have been grueling. Devoted to Riordan, whom Wardlaw refers to as the most important male figure in his life, Wardlaw shows little hesitation to tangle with enemies. He is capable of hurling profanities and has been accused of leveling threats.

And yet, he also is curiously shy and soft around his children. When Wardlaw’s wife, a powerhouse in her own right, was sworn in as a federal judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Bill Wardlaw read a statement of thanks to friends and supporters, rarely smiling as he plowed ahead with his remarks. But when son Billy Wardlaw thanked his mother for being a “good mom” as well as a good judge, Bill Wardlaw beamed.

Parks and Riordan

Still, Wardlaw’s work with Parks did not succeed in the early 1990s. Despite what sources said was an impressive showing in his oral exam, the deputy chief fell one vote short of securing the chief’s job. Unfazed by the setback, Wardlaw never stopped supporting Parks.

“You don’t have to listen to him for very long before you know he’s a strong, confident person,” Wardlaw said. “He loves the LAPD. . . . This city would have been substantially better off if he had been selected the first time.”

Parks has no illusions about the role that Wardlaw played: “There’s no doubt in my mind that he helped tremendously. This was such an important decision for the mayor, and Bill Wardlaw is so important to the mayor.”

It was a decision that all sides have reaped the benefits of.

As chief, Parks has become a symbol of Riordan’s leadership, probably more widely recognized than the mayor himself. Under Parks, Los Angeles’ crime rate has continued its steady decline, and the Police Department is reshaping itself according to his vision.

Riordan ran for office in 1993 on a pledge to build the LAPD and make Los Angeles a safer place to live and work, so law enforcement always has stood at the center of his agenda. These days, he rarely gives a speech in which he does not trumpet those gains or highlight Parks’ role in bringing them about.

As such, Riordan’s legacy and Parks’ are inextricably one. And since Riordan’s and Wardlaw’s are as well, the chief’s success also reflects on Wardlaw.

Yaroslavsky’s Future

Yaroslavsky, meanwhile, is much on the minds of Los Angeles political leaders as they contemplate the next generation. He is on every short list of candidates to succeed Riordan--joined there most prominently by Hahn and sometimes by Villaraigosa--and many observers believe the coming election represents his last best chance to become Los Angeles’ mayor.

The city’s growing and increasingly assertive Latino population, the argument goes, will soon find its place at the political table, but that day still may be a few years off. Following that logic, 2001 may represent the best opportunity for a non-Latino candidate to win the mayor’s office.

Yaroslavsky rejects that argument out of hand.

“I think this city is too far beyond that” sort of ethnic calculation, he said in a recent interview. “It certainly doesn’t influence my thinking.”

Although politicians are often coy about their plans for seeking other offices, friends and supporters of Yaroslavsky say that he seems genuinely undecided about whether to seize the moment.

“This is not an obsession with me,” he said. “I live in the city. I care about the city. But I care about what I’m doing here too.”

If he enters the race, Yaroslavsky would bring strengths and inspire doubts. Eleven years ago, he dabbled with the idea of trying to oust Tom Bradley, but was rocked by the leak of an embarrassing political strategy memo sent to him. The memo was written in breezy language and contained some crass references to ethnic politics; its leak touched off a minor uproar. Yaroslavsky, who remains sensitive to criticism for a man who has spent his entire adult life in politics, quickly withdrew from the race.

His retreat disappointed some backers, who felt he bailed out too easily, particularly because the memo was not written by him but rather addressed to him. Today, some supporters worry that he would repeat that performance in the coming campaign--fighting up to a point, then bailing out if the pressure grew too great.

Another drawback: his likely opposition. Hahn is quiet and not overwhelmingly charismatic, but he holds citywide office, has strong support among liberals and African Americans and he has been planning for this race for much of his life.

His stock rose when he won reelection by easily routing San Fernando Valley attorney Ted Stein, who was backed strongly by Riordan and Wardlaw.

Villaraigosa, meanwhile, is less tested, but he is charming and articulate, and, as speaker of the California Assembly, would be the most prominent Latino ever to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa raises another potential weakness for Yaroslavsky. The supervisor angered some Latino leaders last year by sponsoring a successful ballot measure that blocks the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from using public money to build more rail lines. That ends the region’s misadventure into rail without ever building a stop on the predominantly Latino Eastside. Yaroslavsky was born in East Los Angeles and considers himself a friend to the city’s Latino population, but his attack on the MTA is a topic that Villaraigosa undoubtedly would raise in a mayor’s race.

But Yaroslavsky has advantages too. He is comfortable on the stump, in the board room and in an interview. He has a strong staff built since 1975, when, as a young firebrand, he first captured a council seat. He was a fixture on the City Council for 20 years, and then easily made the move to the county Board of Supervisors.

Over that time, he has built a strong network of supporters and admirers. Among them: Wardlaw and Parks.

Parks won’t play a role in the coming mayor’s race--historically, the city’s police chief has steered clear of overt political activity. He does not disguise his enthusiasm for a possible run by his friend, however.

“I think he’d be a good mayor,” the chief said. “I don’t think there’s anybody who knows this city any better.”

More important to Yaroslavsky would be the support he could expect from Wardlaw.

Already, Wardlaw has not so subtly shaped the coming mayor’s race with a few passing swipes at Steve Soboroff, another friend of Riordan, who has dabbled with the idea of running. When Wardlaw publicly remarked that the next mayor of Los Angeles would not be a wealthy Republican, Soboroff, who is both those things, was stung. Since one of Soboroff’s principal claims to office would be to continue and amplify Riordan’s legacy, Wardlaw’s shot across his bow was widely interpreted as effectively eliminating his chances.

By contrast, Wardlaw is openly effusive about Yaroslavsky.

“I am an admirer of Zev,” he said. “Do I think he would be a very good mayor? The answer is yes.”

Wardlaw’s support would mean several things for Yaroslavsky. It would give the supervisor entree to the well-heeled supporters who helped elect and reelect Riordan. It would bolster Yaroslavsky’s labor backing, because Wardlaw has long and strong ties to the city’s labor leaders.

And it might deliver Riordan’s endorsement and support, potentially vital given that Riordan is enjoying a surge of popularity and is particularly well-liked by the city’s business community, which might have some reservations about Yaroslavsky.

Wardlaw said he would not presume to suggest which candidate Riordan should back. But Riordan made it clear that Wardlaw’s advice will guide him.

Asked whether there was any chance that he and Wardlaw would support different candidates for mayor in 2001, the mayor responded bluntly: “No. I can’t imagine it.”