Riordan’s Pre-Campaign Tour Stops at Riverside

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, weighing a campaign for governor, continued his statewide tour Thursday in typical fashion, calling himself “a nerd,” stumbling in an attempt at Spanish and still managing to win over a room of computer students.

Riordan, a Republican who is considering challenging Gov. Gray Davis in 2002 and is on a pre-campaign tour of the state, visited the Cesar Chavez Community Center in the rough-and-tumble Riverside neighborhood known as Eastside. After eight years, Riordan was forced from office by term limits; Riordan supports those limits and before running for office helped secure passage of the two-term cap for Los Angeles’ mayor.

Recently, he has been urged to run for governor by, among others, the Bush administration.

On Thursday, he spent most of his time milling about the UC Riverside Community Digital Initiative, a classroom that offers cheap computer training to area residents, most of them poor and minorities. Long before entering politics, Riordan, a multimillionaire lawyer and venture capitalist, was an active proponent of using computers in schools. Through his Riordan Foundation, he has donated thousands of computers to schools across the country, mainly in poor communities.

“Are you going to teach me Spanish?” he asked 18-year-old Bethany Alvaraz, described as a “star student” by one of her teachers. “Mucho gracias!”

“Muchas,” Alvaraz said, correcting him.

“OK,” Riordan said with a grin.

To a degree, that exchange and the visit to the community center represent the awkward position Riordan could find himself in if he enters the race.

Despite increasing diversity, the Inland Empire has become one of the most conservative regions of the state. Riverside and San Bernardino counties sided with George W. Bush in the last election--an anomaly in California, which handed Al Gore a 12-point victory though Gore barely lifted a finger to campaign here.

Riordan, if he runs, would sell himself to voters as a moderate Republican, one who favors, for example, abortion rights. Some of those same views have caused some GOP leaders to question his Republican stripes and his commitment to conservative causes. As a result, political observers believe Riordan would have to lean hard to the political right to win over conservative bastions like this one.

That will be true especially before the March primary, when he would face two other Republicans, Los Angeles investment banker William Simon Jr. and Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Fresno farmer who has accused Riordan of being too liberal for the GOP.

At the same time, to win a statewide race Riordan would have to make substantial inroads in California’s minority communities, which remain, for the most part, heavily Democratic.

Arnold Steinberg, a political strategist who is considering working for the potential Riordan campaign, cautioned that the public should not read too much into the places the former mayor visits as he weighs a campaign.

“Most voters are far from focusing on next year’s elections,” he said.

However, Steinberg said Riordan must launch a concerted effort to win over stalwart Republicans and minorities--no easy task.

“It’s absolutely critical that Dick Riordan triumph in March with an eye toward November, and that means consolidating very skillfully--almost surgically--a Republican base,” Steinberg said. “At the same time, he has to broaden that base . . . [making] inroads among Latinos.”

Riordan found himself straddling those worlds Thursday: He was ensconced in the Inland Empire, hosted by Assemblyman Rod Pacheco, a Riverside Republican. Yet he visited a community center at the heart of a diverse community--a place considered one of the few havens for local children after school, where minority leaders gathered three years ago after four white police officers shot and killed a black woman, Tyisha Miller.

Riordan said California Republicans are “an endangered species.” And he said his campaign, if he runs, would present voters with a new face of the GOP--a more inclusive, less ideological party.

Riordan, however, quickly returned to the “aw-shucks” theme of his “exploration,” saying he is merely “feeling the pulse of the whole state to see if they can tolerate Dick Riordan or whether they want to send me back to retirement.”

Asked why the public should want to elect him governor, Riordan said with a laugh: “I’m a nerd.”

“I’m not going to be any different than I’ve always been,” he said. “And I hope they like what they see.”

Ted Telemaque did. The Eastside resident has taken classes at the computer lab in hopes of starting a business. He showed off his skills to Riordan during Thursday’s visit--and said later that he believes Riordan can win over minority communities.

“I don’t think people vote the ticket as much as they vote the man,” Telemaque said. “I don’t think he’d have a hard time.”

There was another bonus for the former mayor.

“I’ve been watching him for eight years, and I guess television makes you fatter,” Telemaque said. “He’s a little bit thinner than I thought.”