A Journey From Brash Novice to Savvy Contender

Joel Wachs is running for mayor again.

Not as the brash young politician who flouted the establishment in 1973, futilely bashing front-runner Tom Bradley.

And not as just another of the Los Angeles city councilmen buried in 1993 by Richard Riordan’s riches and outsider appeal.

Today, at long last, Joel Wachs is a contender, embracing his role as a government elder and promising to protect taxpayers’ money as if it’s his own.

If the 62-year-old councilman’s populist appeal succeeds and he finally makes his way to the mayor’s suite, it will fulfill three decades of preparation and aspiration--perhaps the longest political courtship in the city’s modern history.

But Wachs’ odyssey has been about more than long-stifled mayoral ambitions. It’s about a 29-year City Hall veteran who is running, incongruously, like an outsider. It’s about a political survivor, who built an early reputation supporting liberal causes such as rent control and public art, then evolved into a tightfisted protector of the public purse.

His bottom-line sensibilities are matched in private: Even in the midst of the mayor’s race, Wachs, the well-heeled art collector, still pushes his own shopping cart up the aisles of a Ralphs near his Studio City home, clutching his double coupons and scanning for buys.

“The money that is being wasted in government,” says Wachs, “can so easily be invested in other things.” He attributes his instincts to his father, an immigrant from Austria-Hungary who worked endless hours at his Torrance dress shop.

Wachs’ targets are his constituents’: From bashing taxpayer subsidies for Staples Center to slamming a plan to recycle sewage into drinking water, he has had an exceptional grasp of the issues that upset voters most. That has led him to oppose so many proposals that a former deputy to Mayor Riordan calls him simply, “Dr. No.”

When he’s on target, Wachs can redefine the public debate and, occasionally, save taxpayers money. But he’s also gained a reputation for whipping up distrust of government, with little real gain.

Citizens often embrace Wachs as their common-sense advocate. “I think he always has the underdog at heart,” said Shirley Lowy, a North Hollywood sales representative drawn to Wachs’ campaign office after seeing him at a debate. “And he is passionate about making L.A. work, so it can stick together as one city.”

Yet some of those who deal most closely with him at City Hall have been exasperated at what they see as Wachs’ penchant for divisive politicking. They say his “grandstanding” is no substitute for real commitment and follow-through.

“Joel has a very strong tendency to dive into the pool without bringing his swim fins or his goggles,” said one lobbyist, who has worked both with and against the councilman but does not want to risk a public criticism. “It’s really the splash that mattered more to him and not making the long swim.”

Topics Wachs Dismisses

Onstage at a recent mayoral debate, Wachs summed up his case for being mayor. Then he told an overflow audience what he wouldn’t talk about.

“People don’t care about someone being the first Latino mayor, or the first Jewish mayor or the first gay mayor or first woman mayor,” he said. “They just want someone who will address the important issues that we’re talking about today.”

The gathering of environmentalists erupted into the loudest applause of the two-hour debate. Once again, Wachs had correctly sensed the people’s mood.

He already had decided that he would not focus on the fact he could become the city’s first Jewish mayor and first openly gay mayor. (He disclosed his sexual orientation in a television interview 16 months ago.)

“It’s just not an issue in this election,” Wachs explains. “I have spent 30 years working for everyone. People know that and that’s what they care about.”

That is the kind of decision that Wachs makes mostly on his own. He has a campaign manager and a big-name media advisor. But more than most of his rivals, his run for mayor retains a do-it-yourself feel, much like 10 previous campaigns for City Council and for mayor.

Wachs, after all, has been running for office since George Washington High School. At UCLA, he was elected student body president. He relished the political game, even as he went on to Harvard Law School and later earned a master’s degree in tax law.

“I didn’t really enjoy the law that much--spending all that time saving rich people’s money,” Wachs said. “I really wanted to do something more in the public interest.”

He got the chance in 1971, when he rode the beginnings of a civic anti-development wave to take on a vulnerable City Council incumbent, James Potter.

His parents funded about half of their son’s campaign. They painted his signs (“Another House Sold on Joel Wachs”) and buttonholed voters at supermarkets.

Wachs lashed Potter for having cozy relationships with hillside developers. He not only won, but also discovered a theme--attacking the big and powerful--that would work for him again and again.

As a councilman, he fought the city’s real estate lobby to help win the rent control law. He took on Department of Water and Power bureaucrats to obtain lower rates for senior citizens on fixed incomes.

He created the city’s arts endowment, then helped it grow from $3 million to $17 million annually. And he demonstrated a passion for civil rights--writing the city’s laws prohibiting discrimination against gays and those with AIDS.

His ambition surfaced early, too. Wachs ran for mayor after just two years on the council. He would admit later that the 1973 campaign had little chance, but was designed to raise his profile citywide. He finished a distant fifth.

Wachs’ mayoral hopes continued to simmer, and contributed to a political subterfuge that continues to color his reputation at City Hall.

Mayoral hopefuls dearly wanted to win the post of City Council president in 1981 because they considered it a high-profile platform for launching a run for Bradley’s seat, should he win the 1982 contest for governor.

Wachs had pledged, in writing, to support City Councilwoman Pat Russell for the presidency. On the morning of the vote, however, that commitment vanished. In a deal engineered by Council President John Ferraro, Wachs stunned Russell and voted for himself.

He became council president by an 8-7 vote. Two decades later, the incident still has currency among City Hall’s leadership, evidence in their eyes that Wachs can’t necessarily be trusted.

The councilman is unrepentant. “I think anyone would have voted for themselves in the same situation,” he says.

All the maneuvering for the mayor’s office went for naught, as it turned out. Bradley lost his bid for the state’s top job to George Deukmejian by a razor-thin margin.

But ambivalence about Wachs remained pronounced. And five years later, his colleagues reconfigured his district during redistricting to include the semirural reaches of the north San Fernando Valley.

Some thought the urbane Wachs would be doomed. Instead, he proved supple. Wachs donned boots and a cowboy hat and even threw a country music festival, partially at city expense, to bond with his new and more conservative constituents. He won reelection easily.

Concise and Impassioned

It’s a typical morning at City Hall: Joel Wachs is running late again. He’s striding briskly toward the tiny room where council members hold news conferences--a room he uses a lot. He’s shuffling through a stack of notes crammed in his pocket. And he’s bantering with his longtime chief of staff, Greg Nelson.

Once behind the microphones, Wachs is typically concise and impassioned. He wants a new schedule that allows police officers to work four days a week, and he wants it now.

“I’m out there with officers on a regular basis and officers all over who want this change,” Wachs says, eyebrows jumping excitedly on his unlined face. “It will send an important message to officers that we really care about them and want them to stay.”

With a representative from the powerful police union beside him, it would seem a winning moment for the candidate. But the reality is that the City Council has been unwilling to alter work schedules without the support of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. And there’s a more immediate problem: On the other side of the microphones are just two television cameras and few reporters.

Hurrying from the press room, Wachs isn’t happy. “There were only like 10 people in there,” he snaps to no one in particular. “That’s just ridiculous!”

But on other days, Wachs’ fervor has impact. Like the time in 1994 when he stood amid stacks of paper, computer disks, glue sticks and file folders at City Hall. The councilman proclaimed that a wasteful city bureaucracy paid a lot more for the supplies than his staff did retail.

Wachs demanded a revamp of the city purchasing and warehousing system. And the bureaucracy began to make real change. Retooled procedures have saved $6 million annually so far; serious money, if short of the $70 million annual savings Wachs had projected.

And that was a mere warmup for Wachs’ signature moment as the taxpayers’ watchdog. It began in 1996, when developers began courting the city to build a new downtown sports arena. Most of the political and business establishment, from Mayor Riordan to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, pined for the deal. Not Joel Wachs.

He said that negotiations with the developers were far too secretive and that the city should keep all the increased tax revenue generated by what became Staples Center, instead of just some.

When the developers wouldn’t budge, Wachs threatened to force an initiative onto the ballot to let voters block the subsidy.

“I just simply couldn’t believe that people wanted their hard-earned tax dollars spent on billionaire team owners and gazillionaire players,” Wachs says on the campaign circuit today, breathlessly reprising his condemnation of the Staples deal.

The developers threatened to build in Inglewood. But, with Mahony and Ferraro--by then the council president--acting as intermediaries, the builders eventually agreed to greater protections for the city coffers. Terms of the deal were made public, at Wachs’ insistence.

Some still debate how much good Wachs did. But the consensus is that he helped safeguard the city treasury. Even a proponent for the builders privately concedes: “Joel deserves credit for ensuring better protections for the city--making sure there were repayments of public funds.”

Playing to Fears, Some Claim

Joel Wachs says he doesn’t need polls or consultants to tell him how the people of the city feel. He hears it in the supermarket, at the laundry and in the letters to his office.

But some of those who work most closely with Wachs at City Hall say he is too captive to the public’s moods.

Critics cite his ongoing fight against a water reclamation project as just one example of Wachs’ tendency to play to people’s fears.

The East Valley Water Reclamation Project in the San Fernando Valley has been in the works for more than a decade. In 1994, a unanimous City Council agreed to use state funds for the project to cleanse sewage water. Treated waste water would seep over five years into an underground aquifer, before being released to the public as treated tap water.

Wachs voted for the project. News accounts made it clear that the recycled water would be used for public consumption.

Yet, despite all that attention and his earlier vote for the project, Wachs last summer announced that he was surprised and disturbed to learn the reclamation project would produce drinking water.

That fact had been “hidden” by Department of Water and Power officials, he insists. He bashed the purported secrecy and the project’s inherent “yuck factor.” In his motion against the project, he demanded more study and proclaimed: “It’s enough to make you gag!”

About $55 million has already been spent. The reclamation project is essentially completed, DWP officials say. Water that could serve about 120,000 homes hangs in the balance. DWP executives say privately they will allow the project to remain on hold, at least during the election season.

Many of Wachs’ colleagues shake their heads at what they believe is his meritless intervention.

“The thing that is most disappointing is that, rather than play into the fears of people, you would hope your leaders would serve as sources of information,” said Frances Spivy-Weber, executive director of the Mono Lake Committee, an environmental group that supports the project.

Wachs said he is proud of his stand, and notes that other politicians and experts have lined up on his side of the issue. Besides, he’s been accused of grandstanding many times before. It always seems to be on issues, he said, “where there is a huge, overwhelming consensus of the people, which is diametrically opposed to the way the government is acting.”

Critics say the incident underscores a disconnect between Wachs’ often aggressive opposition and the more positive approach expected of the city’s mayor.

“Recently, Joel has seemed to relish a populist role. He prides himself more on being Dr. No,” said Robin Kramer, Riordan’s former chief of staff and a supporter of mayoral rival Antonio Villaraigosa. “To succeed, the chief executive of the city surely has to be able to say no, but there are many other attributes that one must have to be an effective leader.”

Wachs also suffers, in the minds of some, from his failure to follow through on issues he says are dear to him.

Only infrequently does he attend meetings of the committee that oversees the Police Department. And in the last year that he chaired the council’s Governmental Efficiency Committee--ending in mid-1999--he canceled more meetings then he held.

Despite his background as a tax attorney and his constant complaints about spending, he has never fought to chair the council’s budget committee, a task that brings considerable power over how the city spends its money, but also much hard work and political heat.

Wachs calls the accusation that he has shirked his duties “ridiculous.” He said he arranged the efficiency committee meetings to get the most done in the least time and, on police issues, that he attends that committee when pressing matters arise. Wachs said he would have thought more seriously about chairing the budget committee if others weren’t doing the job well.

On the centerpiece of his campaign, neighborhood empowerment, Wachs faces a similar critique.

Since his 1993 mayoral bid, he has promoted the need for strong neighborhood councils to advise city government. Yet Wachs is one of the few council members who has never organized such a group in his own district.

Wachs said he has not formed any because they do not yet have the staff and funding to make them as powerful as they should be.

“I don’t want to form a council just to have some silly little committee, with no staff, no resources and essentially no impact,” Wachs said. “I want to do it right and give them a powerful voice inside City Hall.”

It’s not clear if Wachs pays a price for his purported inconsistencies.

“According to some cynical strategists, even when Joel loses, he wins,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who has generally maintained a cordial relationship with Wachs. “Because people really like him running against City Hall. That overlooks one important feature, of course. He is City Hall and he has been for 30 years.”

Run Is Seen as a Last Hurrah

Wachs and his staff view the 2001 campaign as a sort of last hurrah. If he wins, there might be a reelection fight in four years. But if he loses, he says, he’ll serve out the last two years of his council term and retire, his career ended by term limits.

He says he could take a job with a nonprofit group or an arts organization. He’d certainly have more time to build his own collection, ranked by an art magazine a decade ago as one of the top private collections in the world.

Wachs built the assemblage of paintings, sculpture and photographs meticulously, acquiring many young artists before their work gained acclaim and high price tags. He has made a practice of spending one-fourth of his salary, now $133,051 a year, on art. A decade ago, the collection was valued at $500,000.

But that’s personal. For a man who has made a career out of ferreting out secrecy at City Hall, Wachs is intensely private. He grants an interview with his mother, but only after forbidding discussion of his personal life. He declines to allow a reporter into his house, furnished with works by Andy Warhol, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler and an array of others.

Political professionals might say he should be sharing more of himself, to give voters a glimpse of the private man. But it’s Joel Wachs’ campaign. And he’s made up his mind.

“I am not here to be loved by everyone or be king of the senior prom,” he likes to tell audiences. “I am here to do the job. And sometimes that means stepping on some toes.”

Wachs seems to relish his splendid isolation.

“After all these years I have invested I just want my best shot,” Wachs says. “I will just present myself to people and see what comes.”

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Joel Wachs

* Born: March 1, 1939, in Scranton, Pa.

* Education: UCLA, bachelor of arts, 1961; Harvard Law School, law degree, 1964; New York University, master’s degree in tax law, 1965.

* Personal: Single

* Party: Independent (previously Republican)

* Career: Former tax attorney. Nearly 30-year member of Los Angeles City Council, representing the San Fernando Valley’s 2nd District. Wrote the city’s rent stabilization law; created its endowment for the arts and its law forbidding discrimination against those with HIV. More recently, helped reform the city’s purchasing system, saving $6 million a year, and battled against subsidies for Staples Center.

* Strategy: Although he is the most veteran politician in the race, Wachs says he is running to shake up the status quo at City Hall. The former Republican has a solid base in the Valley, particularly among senior citizens. He hopes to use this and his work to protect taxpayers’ money to expand his appeal to voters citywide.

About This Series

The Times today presents the second of six profiles of the major candidates for mayor. The articles will appear in the order in which the candidates will appear on the ballot.