Mayor Tours Poor Neighborhoods

In a trip replete with policy and political overtones, Mayor Richard Riordan toured some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods Monday, using his stops to launch initiatives, to set the agenda for the remainder of his administration and to stifle complaints that he has not done enough to spread the city’s wealth.

Riordan, whose clashes with the City Council have been a regular feature of his administration, even spent part of the day buddying up with a few council members. Rudy Svorinich, Nate Holden, Nick Pacheco and Mike Hernandez joined the mayor at various stops on his daylong tour.

Community leaders such as “Sweet” Alice Harris in Watts, Helen Johnson in South-Central and basketball great turned entrepreneur Earvin “Magic” Johnson also met with Riordan.

Billed as the “Empower L.A. Express,” Riordan’s bus tour of the city was launched from City Hall and traveled through South Los Angeles, Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights, taking in overwhelmingly black and Latino neighborhoods. The trip had a campaign feel, with council members and others leading city officials in cheers as they pointed out evidence of the city’s progress.

In fact, during at least two stops, passersby stopped to ask whether Riordan was running for office. Term limits prevent Riordan from seeking reelection, and he passed up a chance to run for governor two years ago. Riordan has said he does not intend to run for another office, but he seemed to relish the energy of Monday’s event, bounding in and out of the bus and wading into a group of children to hand out Christmas presents.

Sprinkled through the day, Riordan made announcements of local significance.

He pledged $1 million toward the renovation of Santa Barbara Plaza, a threadbare shopping center across the street from the enormously successful Magic Johnson Theatres in the Crenshaw area. In Boyle Heights, he watched as a bulldozer destroyed an abandoned home that had become a magnet for drug dealing, and he announced that the city intends to demolish or rehabilitate about 225 more such homes next year. In South-Central, he repeated his promise, first made at a church service Sunday, to rehabilitate a park every two weeks for the rest of his administration. And in Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights, he touted his Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, which steers $1 million a year for three years to each of more than a dozen communities.

Overarching those announcements were at least two unspoken messages: Riordan intends to fight irrelevance in his final six months in office, and he intends to defend his record at helping the poor against challenges by the field of candidates arrayed to succeed him. One candidate in particular, City Atty. James K. Hahn, irritated Riordan during a recent debate when, in response to a question, he said that “this mayor has failed this community.”

It was far from the first time that the mayor has encountered such a critique.

He fiercely objects to that criticism, however, and argued throughout the day Monday that Los Angeles’ improved economic fortunes over the past eight years have created jobs and improved the quality of life for many of the city’s poor, including African Americans.

Even Riordan’s critics grant that many successful projects have been completed during his seven years in office. But they fault him for what they see as a scattershot approach, without the benefit of a grander vision.

Riordan shrugged off that criticism, saying progress is made one piece at a time, centered in communities that rise to the challenge and take responsibility for their progress.

“It’s happening,” he said. “Now it has to happen in every nook and cranny of Los Angeles.”