Vacationing Mayor Pedals as Strikers Burn

As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s crippling strike grinds on and Los Angeles’ working poor scramble onto bicycles and into gypsy cabs to make their way to jobs, clinics and schools, the city’s multimillionaire mayor is biking, too.

His companions, however, are celebrities, and the roads they are traveling run through the lush wine-producing valleys of southwestern France.

Mayor Richard Riordan’s absence during so painful a moment for the city, especially for its poorest residents, has drawn ridicule and criticism from union leaders and others, who complain of what they see as his insensitivity. At a spirited rally for the striking transit workers Thursday morning, Riordan’s bike trip made him the butt of jokes and the target of attacks.

“This mayor leaves office next June,” began Miguel Contreras, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and normally a Riordan ally. Then, as Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa--a mayoral candidate, longtime labor supporter and friend of Contreras--stepped toward the microphone, Contreras continued: “Next year, when [Villaraigosa] becomes mayor of L.A., we won’t have these problems.”

Contreras later asked council members Nate Holden and Jackie Goldberg if they would send a message to the mayor to return from France and help end the strike. Cheering and clapping, the crowd broke into a chant: “Bring him back!”

“Message delivered!” Holden responded as the crowd cheered wildly.

In a telephone interview from France, Riordan defended his absence. According to the mayor, he and the rest of the MTA board have agreed to let the transit agency’s staff handle the negotiations, making his presence unnecessary.

Moreover, Riordan said he is in regular contact with local officials, although county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who heads the MTA, said her last conversation with Riordan was on Monday, when he participated in a conference call. Riordan said his own position is that the MTA should be asking for bigger concessions from its workers, so his presence in Los Angeles would not help bring the two sides closer together but might actually exacerbate the split.

“I think we’ve asked for too little,” said Riordan, who generally supports organized labor and who played an important role in helping to resolve the janitors’ strike earlier this year.

Riordan did not, however, address the question raised by some of leaving on such a lavish vacation while so many in his city are struggling. The French bike trip is Riordan’s second European vacation in a month. He traveled to the former Yugoslavia and Italy in late August.

The criticisms of his trip are all the more stinging because they come at a rough time for the mayor. Among his friends and supporters, there is a deepening sense that Riordan and his administration are slipping up frequently in their final year in office, beset by misjudgments and miscalculations. The normally congenial Riordan has contributed to those concerns by venting his anger on a number of recent occasions, fueling the sense that he and his administration are isolated and defensive.

According to people close to the mayor, Riordan privately has acknowledged that the administration is having its troubles. He recently has tried to bring back some key staff members who departed in recent years, including former Chief of Staff Robin Kramer and former Deputy Mayor Noelia Rodriguez.

He has also complained of feeling overwhelmed by anger. Some of that is directed toward media coverage, some of it focused on his longtime friend and advisor Bill Wardlaw, whose public break with Riordan over the election of the next mayor has hurt Riordan’s administration in various ways.

Without Wardlaw--who is a Democrat--the Republican Riordan has struggled, most noticeably in the negotiations over the future of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The mayor for months insisted that the U.S. Justice Department was not serious about its threat to sue the city over the LAPD’s alleged “pattern or practice” of infringing on civil rights. He repeatedly questioned whether the department’s negotiators had the authority to file such a lawsuit. Many advisors warned him that he was wrong to dismiss the federal government’s seriousness, but Riordan persisted in arguing that the Justice Department was bluffing.

As recently as Sept. 8, Riordan wrote to the Justice Department, urging it to reconsider its insistence on a consent decree to resolve the LAPD negotiations. Such a decree, Riordan wrote, would be “punitive” and would leave the city with an “undeserved stigma.”

Deputy Atty. General Eric H. Holder responded the same day, according to copies of the correspondence. In his letter, Holder brusquely warned Riordan that federal officials did indeed “remain ready and able to file our lawsuit.”

In addition, alluding to Riordan’s suggestion that the federal negotiators were acting on their own in threatening to bring such a case, Holder wrote: “Assistant Atty. Gen. Bill Lann Lee and his team of Civil Rights Division lawyers, led by the chief of the Special Litigation Section, have been representing the department’s interests, with the full support of the attorney general and myself.”

According to people close to the talks, Riordan continued, even in the face of that, to press for advantage. On Sept. 12, he met with former Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher, who headed the 1991 commission that crafted a far-reaching package of police reforms.

Christopher would neither comment on that meeting nor confirm that it took place. Riordan, however, said he wanted Christopher’s advice, both on the substance of the proposed agreement and on possible suggestions for a monitor who would oversee any settlement. Sources familiar with the meeting said Christopher unambiguously told Riordan that he favored the consent decree, leaving the mayor with no hope that he might be able to fight on with the support of the former secretary of state.

The last straw for Riordan came three days later, when City Council President John Ferraro, Christopher’s longtime friend, informed Riordan that he, too, would support the decree.

At that point, finally conceding that federal officials seemed determined to file their case--and faced with crumbling political support locally for his position--Riordan abruptly tossed in the towel.

On Thursday the mayor defended his actions in a telephone interview from France.

Riordan said he remained opposed to the consent decree but agreed to it, provided certain conditions are met, because he had no other options.

“I’m a pragmatist,” he said. “People have to have confidence in the leadership of this city.”

The past several months have been busy ones for Riordan and Los Angeles. The weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention tested Riordan’s fund-raising abilities as he tapped friends for contributions. The convention itself stretched the LAPD and other city agencies.

Through those months, several people expressed worry about Riordan’s occasional bursts of temper. On Thursday, the mayor acknowledged that he has struggled with anger recently but said he was now past it.

“About six weeks ago, I turned to [wife] Nancy [Daly Riordan] and said, ‘I’m too angry at too many people,’ ” he said. “Since then, I haven’t been angry.”

Riordan, who controls four votes on the MTA board, is scheduled to return to work next week. He will return to the jeers of some strikers and others, as well as to the criticisms of colleagues inside and outside the city government.

“At the height of crisis in the MTA he is not attending to his responsibility, and there is no one of whom we are aware who is doing that in his place,” Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said. “There has been no briefing of the council. There has been no communication from the mayor to the council as a whole. I think MTA employees rightly feel abandoned, neglected and frankly disrespected by his lack of attention.”

And yet, Riordan has weathered challenges to his sensitivity before. This is, after all, the same mayor who once ate a hamburger as he talked to a group of gardeners staging a hunger strike on the steps of City Hall.

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Times staff writer Tina Daunt contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Riordan

Mayor outside of the city of Los Angeles on business or pleasure.

Start of MTA strike

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Source: City records

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STRIKE PROBLEMS WIDEN

Riders stranded by the MTA strike missed medical appointments, classes and work. B1