Legacy Secure, Riordan Faces Uncertain Year

Mayor Richard Riordan this week begins the last, least demanding, but in some ways most difficult year of his administration.

His legacy is largely secure, but his personal relevance is slipping away, along with his ability to influence events in the city he has governed since 1993.

Los Angeles’ economy has vastly improved since then. The city is safer than it has been in a generation. Its civic charter, a source of Progressive Era pride but also an obstacle to 21st century efficiency, has been overhauled for the first time in 75 years. Emblematic projects such as the Disney Concert Hall, once all but dead, are now heading toward construction. The area’s education system, long a source of shame, is groping at last toward reform.

Riordan’s admirers and critics will long debate how much the mayor had to do with those changes, but all of that has happened on his watch, and some historians, most notably Kevin Starr, are already proclaiming Riordan one of the era’s most effective mayors.

Now, the same Riordan who is largely responsible for city term limits is facing their bite. It is, according to a number of people close to him, a difficult reckoning.

“He’s finding it harder than he expected to let go,” one longtime associate said. “This isn’t easy for him.”

That sentiment is widely repeated among Riordan confidants, although they decline to say so publicly for fear of offending a man they like and respect. Still, to some of those who know him best, Riordan recently has seemed pensive. He muses openly about his future, pondering life as a private citizen devoted to education, but unsure where and how to continue making his mark.

Slights that once mattered little to him have taken on new significance. Never a fan of the way he’s covered in the press, Riordan recently has taken greater offense at criticism of him in certain stories--especially in the areas of education and his own administration.

More tellingly, where once Riordan shrugged off such differences as part of the business of politics, lately he has personalized them, complaining of feeling wounded. That has surprised some people close to him, but they try to explain his actions by saying that he seems uncomfortable with his approaching departure from the limelight.

Meanwhile, Riordan has negotiated a difficult break with his best friend, investment banker Bill Wardlaw. In the race to succeed Riordan, Wardlaw has joined the effort of City Atty. James Hahn as campaign chairman, a move that took Riordan by surprise and creates potential problems for Riordan’s preferred candidate, commercial real estate broker Steve Soboroff.

New Friction May Weaken Mayor’s Hand

For nearly a decade, the friendship and alliance between Riordan and Wardlaw has been a defining fact of this city’s politics and government. Wardlaw’s strong ties to the Clinton administration helped the mayor deliver on the buildup of the Los Angeles Police Department and the recovery from the 1994 earthquake--two of Riordan’s most acclaimed achievements.

And Wardlaw’s version of a Los Angeles political machine assisted Riordan in his periodic end-runs around City Hall, in last year’s charter reform campaign and the overthrow of the school board, for instance.

As a result, the friction between Wardlaw and Riordan could accelerate the mayor’s declining influence. Indeed, the mere announcement of Wardlaw’s decision to join with Hahn appeared to rattle Riordan, who responded by labeling the city attorney the “weakest candidate” in the race.

Opinion about whether Hahn would make a good mayor is sharply divided, but he enjoys greater name recognition than any other candidate and has already won five citywide elections. None of the other candidates--Soboroff, California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Joel Wachs--has ever won a citywide race.

Associates attributed Riordan’s uncharacteristic hyperbole to two things: urging from Soboroff advisors that he respond forcefully to Wardlaw’s move, and irritation with Wardlaw for breaking ranks and only notifying him after the decision had been made.

The unusually early flurry of activity in the mayor’s race emphasizes that the city’s political establishment is already beginning to look beyond this mayor and focus on his successor.

“Every time we have one of these conversations, whether it’s about Steve [Soboroff] or Jim [Hahn] or Antonio [Villaraigosa], it’s a conversation we’re not having about Dick Riordan,” said one person who has advised the mayor on political issues. “That’s something new. . . . It has to bother him.”

In recent interviews and public appearances, Riordan has shrugged off questions about his legacy: “It’s not something I think about at all,” he said last week.

And yet, the next 16 months will close out that legacy, and some of the tools that have given Riordan his success to date are no longer at his disposal.

He has demonstrated great interest in the region’s children, and he risked his prestige to campaign for the ouster of three school board incumbents in 1999. His role in crystallizing public anger about the state of Los Angeles schools may prove one of his most lasting contributions to the city.

In the short run, however, it’s left him without much to do. If he throws his weight around, he undermines the same candidates he helped elect; if he doesn’t, he is forced to recede to the sidelines. Backed by strong staff support from Assistant Deputy Mayor Veronica Davey, Riordan has carved out a small but important place for himself, identifying school sites and lobbying for educational reform. Yet, important as it is, few believe that role will satisfy him.

Riordan’s other defining issue has been public safety, but again, he now is something of a prisoner of his own success. He came to office on the promise of a better Police Department, but having selected a chief in whom he has huge confidence, he cannot meddle there or he will risk projecting a lack of faith in his selection. That means he’s relegated to the sidelines although a widening scandal raises questions about the department’s integrity, management and oversight.

On a different front, the Clinton administration long has been a source of money and support--from hiring police officers to earthquake recovery--but Clinton’s a lame duck too and Riordan’s link to Washington is now threatened by the fissure in his relationship with Wardlaw.

Finally, Riordan has periodically won his battles by waging expensive end-runs around City Hall and the local political establishment. He took charter reform to the voters and won. He did the same with the election of four school board candidates. For the moment, however, Riordan plans no more political crusades, though that could change if the school board fritters away its chance to undertake the revolution Riordan believes is desperately needed.

Paradoxically, Riordan’s confounding problems arise just as his administration internally seems to have regained an even keel. After the tumultuous 1998--a year in which he reeled from the resignation of one chief of staff, Robin Kramer, and the failed experiment of her brief successor, Leza Slaughter--sources say that Kelly Martin has brought professionalism and stability to Riordan’s top staff.

Martin has vowed to turn out the lights on the Riordan administration, and her top deputies all are dedicated Riordan loyalists. Toward the end of the year, two may begin to feel the tug of other commitments: Deputy Mayor Noelia Rodriguez is a likely candidate for city controller, and Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo appears poised to soon announce his interest in becoming the next city attorney.

Assuming both run, that could leave Riordan short-handed for the last six to nine months of his administration, but most administration insiders believe he will have a full complement of top-level aides through most of the year.

Bringing About a New Charter

July 1 will bring him one new arrow for his quiver. The new City Charter will take effect that day, giving Riordan almost a year to test it out before turning it over to the next mayor. He and other charter supporters predict that will be a banner day for the city, one in which a series of subtle changes in the power arrangements of City Hall will make the next mayor more accountable for such things as contracts, budgets and the performance of city departments.

For Riordan, those changes are long overdue. He believes they eventually will produce a more efficient, accountable, modern city government, one in which taxes are better spent and public officials more readily held to task by voters. But even if he’s right, those changes will be years in the making, so it remains unclear what effect, if any, voters will notice in the closing months of this administration.

Predicting the future from the past is an especially tricky business in Los Angeles, where precedents--when they’re recalled at all--mean little. Still, the likely highlight of 2000’s political year here is the Democratic National Convention, the first in Los Angeles since John Kennedy was selected for the nomination in 1960. Thousands of delegates and journalists will come to the city in August, when they will be asked to marvel at Los Angeles’ diversity and recovery from the riots and recession of the early 1990s.

That the convention will be in Los Angeles is in no small measure because of Riordan. He lobbied for the event and rallied his friends in the private sector to pull strings and raise money for it.

And yet, even that triumph will be watered down. The delegates who come to town to name their choice for president will find it hard to honor their host. Riordan is a Republican. He likes what he sees in George W. Bush.