Beyond The Issues

By MATEA GOLD and JAMES RAINEY

April 8, 2001 12 AM PT

Becerra--After struggling to articulate a theme for his candidacy, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra in recent months campaigned on the slogan of “neighborhoods first,” trying to carve out a niche for himself as an advocate for quality-of-life issues.

Becerra, 43, said he wants to make every neighborhood like his Eagle Rock home, a place with a nearby police substation, grocery store and school. He has pledged to make city decisions “transparent” by regularly holding town hall meetings around Los Angeles and extending City Hall hours. And he wants to give each child a city library card when they enter kindergarten.

The brainy legislator, who always has a red pen on hand to edit bills and correspondence, has brought his cautious and thorough manner to the mayor’s race. During forums, he tells residents he would ask them to suggest solutions for their local problems before deciding what to do.

Becerra has a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and promises that he will use his experience in Washington, D.C, to bring more federal money to Los Angeles.

During his time in Congress, he has been a staunch defender of immigrant rights and bilingual education. He has made a strong pitch for his mayoral candidacy on Spanish-language television, specifically appealing to Latino voters eager to see one of their own in the mayor’s office.

Skeptics question whether the backing of that community will be enough to get him into the runoff, much less win the mayor’s office against opponents with a broader coalition of support.

With a significantly smaller war chest than his rivals, the four-term Democratic congressman is counting on a grass-roots effort to power his underdog candidacy. Early in the race, he signed up hundreds of volunteers who have been knocking on doors around the city for him.

- MATEA GOLD

Connell--State Controller Kathleen Connell swept into the mayor’s race last fall warning that Los Angeles was lurching from crisis to crisis and desperately needed a tough leader at its helm.

She has since backed away from that dark assessment of the city, but has continued to call for changes in city government with some of the strongest language used by any candidate.

Connell has promoted her reputation as a no-nonsense administrator, calling for audits of all city departments. She would give Police Chief Bernard C. Parks 30 days to prove he could implement her agenda, and has promised to push for the creation of small charter schools.

Supporters say her strong manner would bring a needed change to City Hall, but detractors fear that her brusque style would alienate other city leaders and prevent her from building a consensus.

Connell, 53, served as housing division director for the late Mayor Tom Bradley, and said she seeks the mayor’s office because she wants to return to her roots and govern the city where she is raising her two sons.

Though she hopes to inherit the support of fiscal conservatives who voted for Mayor Richard Riordan, her message about shaking up local government appears to have been received with lukewarm reviews by those considered her natural base: women. Connell is the highest-ranking woman in state government and the only one among the top mayoral candidates, but has not polled well among women.

A cogent, decisive speaker who lays out her proposals in multi-part outlines during mayoral forums, Connell also is known for her sharp tongue, which has earned her an unpopular reputation in Sacramento. She dismisses her critics as people who balk at a strong female leader.

- MATEA GOLD

Hahn--James K. Hahn appears born to a leadership position in Los Angeles. Son of the 40-year county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and nephew of the late City Councilman Gordon Hahn, the four-term Los Angeles city attorney is powered by his political name and his insider’s knowledge as legal advisor to the mayor and City Council.

Hahn’s challenge in the mayor’s race has been to step beyond his father’s shadow and to prove he is a leader himself, not just a legal counselor to others. His sometimes plodding public persona has done little to inspire the belief that he will be a visionary or author of dramatic innovations.

But even Hahn’s advisors are comfortable with the candidate’s bland image as long as he is perceived as a competent manager and problem solver. They believe Angelenos want a steadfast chief executive in a time of economic uncertainty and demographic change.

Hahn says he will add 1,000 officers to the Police Department, expand after-school programs in schools and create a full-time president of the Police Commission to better oversee the Police Department.

Hahn, 50, has built his 20-year political career with solid support, in particular, among African Americans.

His campaign believes that his appeal extends to moderate voters of many ethnicities because of his background as the city’s chief prosecutor. The candidate touts as among his achievements the imposition of injunctions against street gangs and litigation attempting to force gun makers to market their weapons more responsibly.

The city attorney is betting that voters want a safe, responsible politician in the mayor’s office and that conditions are no longer unsettled enough in Los Angeles to merit the kind of experimentation represented by the election of political novice Richard Riordan eight years ago.

- JAMES RAINEY

Soboroff--Steve Soboroff, a deal-maker who helped realize the Staples Center and Alameda Corridor projects, says he wants to apply his businessman’s zest to the job of mayor.

During the campaign, the self-made millionaire has emphasized his outsider credentials, even though he has the backing of Richard Riordan and served as the mayor’s Recreation and Parks commissioner.

He talks about recruiting children away from gangs, reducing traffic congestion and breaking up the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Like Riordan, the 52-year-old real estate broker has poured his own money into the race, breaking the city’s voluntary $2.2-million spending cap, a move he said was necessary because he doesn’t enjoy the name recognition of his fellow candidates.

Soboroff brags about his reputation for getting things done, citing the 200 parks renovated under his watch and the dozens of schools getting new grass fields instead of asphalt.

But his hard-charging attitude rubs some the wrong way. During his work as the head of the Los Angeles school district’s repair and construction committee, he angered officials who felt his approach was too heavy-handed.

And he is often the first to attack his rivals during public appearances, frequently butting heads with City Councilman Joel Wachs, who fiercely criticized the use of public money to subsidize Staples Center.

A glib speaker with a comic’s sense of timing, Soboroff is nimble at winning over audiences with humor. In a common spiel, he jokes about the mix-ups that ensue because of his uncanny physical resemblance to Vice President Dick Cheney.

- MATEA GOLD

Villaraigosa--Antonio Villaraigosa wants to recreate the sort of multiethnic coalition that powered Tom Bradley to the mayor’s office five straight times in the 1970s and 1980s.

The 48-year-old former speaker of the state Assembly bills himself as a political pragmatist who transcended his liberal roots to become a consensus leader in the Legislature. Even many Republican leaders praised Villaraigosa for his initiatives--expanding health care for poor families and creating bond measures to build schools and create parks and preserve open space.

Villaraigosa’s success winning endorsements and raising campaign contributions has established him as a serious contender. He weaves a compelling story about his rise from the streets of Boyle Heights that even opponents concede may be the most inspiring tale on the campaign circuit.

But Villaraigosa’s critics wonder if a relative political novice who thrived by saying “yes” in the Legislature will have the toughness to say “no” in the mayor’s office.

Villaraigosa has been criticized for being too much a captive of the key constituencies that support him, particularly labor unions. Some wonder if he will be able to hold the fiscal line when myriad employee groups come calling for pay raises.

His critics have said the former ACLU board president is too liberal. But his supporters have countered that an extremist would not win the endorsement of a centrist governor like Gray Davis.

Dramatic demographic shifts seem to make it inevitable that a Latino will soon be elected mayor of the nation’s second-largest city. Villaraigosa hopes to make that day arrive sooner than some political commentators expected.

- JAMES RAINEY

Wachs--Nearly 30 years after he won election to the City Council as a brash political upstart fighting special interests, Joel Wachs is still attacking the status quo.

The 62-year-old councilman has a track record on many issues that would make a liberal proud: author of the city’s rent control ordinance, “godfather” of the city’s arts endowment and creator of ordinances to prevent discrimination against gays and people with AIDS.

Wachs, however, is not running as a liberal. The Studio City resident and onetime tax attorney instead is touting his fiscal conservatism. Wachs opposed the taxpayer subsidies originally proposed for construction of the Staples Center arena. He lashed his City Council colleagues for using city funds to help pay for last summer’s Democratic National Convention. He helped reconfigure the city’s purchasing system--saving an estimated $6 million a year.

Those who work most closely with him at City Hall often admire the councilman’s nimble political instincts. Just as often, they are appalled about what they believe is his willingness to pander to his constituents’ fears.

As others called for calm at the time of the second verdict for officers accused of beating Rodney G. King, Wachs insisted that the National Guard should be deployed around the city. He once backed a water reclamation project in the San Fernando Valley, only to claim last year that he and the public had been misled and that the water should not be used for human consumption.

Most recently he has been the lone candidate to say he would certainly oust Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. Supporters say that’s decisiveness. Detractors say it’s political opportunism.

Now voters must decide whether Wachs’ ombudsman-in-chief style would be well suited to the executive suite.

- JAMES RAINEY

Other Mayoral Candidates on the Ballot

Rob Black

Entrepreneur

Wendy Lyons

Garment worker

Joe Shea

Secession advisor

Francis Della Vecchia

watchthemayor.com producer

Melrose Larry Green