Mayor Vows to Revive Troubled Parks

Expanding on a quixotic but successful park revival campaign in recent days, Mayor Richard Riordan pledged Sunday to revive one Los Angeles park every two weeks from now until he leaves office in June.

The mayor made his pledge at two South-Central churches in part to respond to an emerging theme in the race to succeed him: the charge that he and his administration have done too little to address long-standing problems confronting the city’s poor and African American residents.

Riordan, a Republican and wealthy lawyer and businessman, was elected and reelected without significant African American support. Since then, he has been criticized by some black political and community leaders as being insensitive to economic and social needs in the black community, criticism Riordan says is unfair.

Indeed, even as Riordan was speaking on Sunday, the campaign to succeed him was moving along as well. At Second Baptist Church in South-Central, just a few miles from the churches where Riordan spoke, the congregation warmly welcomed City Atty. James K. Hahn, a mayoral candidate who is white but is the son of a politician beloved in the black community, the late Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

From the pulpit there, Hahn criticized the conduct of the recent presidential election in which African Americans have said many of their votes were not counted and voting was made difficult in Florida, helping throw the contest to President-elect George W. Bush.

As Hahn, a Democrat who has carried the African American community in five citywide races, was leaving Second Baptist on Sunday, Senior Pastor William S. Epps assured him: “You are my cat.”

Riordan’s attempts to appeal to African Americans are a harder sell. On Sunday, he was interrupted by applause several times, most notably when he praised Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and other high-profile African Americans in his administration. But the congregation shifted restlessly through much of Riordan’s address, which ran over the time allotted.

Nearing the end of his remarks, Riordan began a sentence with the word “finally.” Some members of the congregation sighed with relief, so loudly that Riordan himself grinned.

Still, he was warmly applauded when he finished, calling upon “the better angels in each of us to guide us on our way.”

In his speeches to First African Methodist Episcopal and Zion Baptist Church, the mayor pledged to use his remaining time in office to extend and expand efforts that benefit the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

He said he would double grants to communities under his Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, which tries to help residents identify and pay for improvement projects. He championed the successes of his minority business program, as well as his efforts to stimulate investment in poor neighborhoods.

And he reminded the congregations that he broke with some leaders of the Republican Party over Proposition 209, the statewide ballot measure that barred many affirmative action programs. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson supported that measure, but Riordan opposed it. Sunday, the mayor called it “evil” and said it had pitted “race against race.”

His most specific pledge was to spell out a plan for fixing up a host of parks during the coming six months--an agenda that he has seized upon in recent days.

On Dec. 6, Riordan was confronted at a community meeting by Helen Johnson, a community activist who begged him to fix up the park in her neighborhood. Moved by her appeal, Riordan promised not only to do it but to finish it within two weeks.

Friday, the mayor, Johnson and area residents gathered in the park to work and to celebrate the near-completion of the project within the tight deadline Riordan set for himself and the city.

Cheered by that success, Riordan on Sunday committed himself to dozens more of those small but significant undertakings between now and July 1, when term limits force him to vacate his office.

Thanking Johnson for having “opened my eyes,” Riordan said at Zion: “I pledge today to revitalize one new park every two weeks until the end of my term. The clock begins ticking on January 1st.”

Despite his assessment of the progress so far and the promise of more to come, Riordan’s politics create obvious challenges in appealing to African Americans, as was evident Sunday.

The same congregation that greeted him tepidly at First AME applauded wildly to a sermon deriding President-elect George Bush. Riordan endorsed Bush, and on Sunday departed from his prepared remarks to praise Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Neither drew much reaction, and Riordan managed to further bungle that passage by referring to Rice as “Consuela.”

By contrast, Hahn grew up in South-Central, is a moderate to liberal Democrat and is clearly comfortable among African Americans. Although Hahn hopes to win the overwhelming support of black voters in the coming mayoral campaign, other candidates say they believe they can pick up some of those votes as well.

U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra, State Controller Kathleen Connell, businessman Steve Soboroff, City Councilman Joel Wachs and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa are the other major candidates in the mayor’s race. The election is scheduled for April, with a runoff set for June if no candidate receives a majority in the first round.

At Second Baptist on Sunday, Hahn listened as senior pastor Epps disdained the vote counting process and the outcome of the presidential election. Another of the church’s ministers lashed out at the “rush to crown a new president.”

It was a theme that Hahn, who supported Vice President Al Gore, was ready to amplify.

“A lot of gifts are being given this time of year. The governor of Texas just got a great gift,” Hahn said to a roar of laughter and applause. “As you know, that comes with an obligation. We are going to be praying for our president elect.”

And though Hahn never specifically mentioned his candidacy for mayor, he did not miss the chance to remind members of the congregation that the breathtakingly close presidential race offered powerful evidence of the importance of voting.

“The question we have before us is, are we going to let that discourage us,” Hahn said. “Or are we going to stand up and say, ‘You know what, I am going to make sure I vote. I am going to make sure that chad has been detached. . . . I am going to make sure that my vote is counted and I am going to make sure that those who are elected are responsible to me.’ ”