Defining Issues Elude Mayoral Candidates

Faced with ambiguous, often contradictory signals about Los Angeles’ sense of itself, the candidates running for mayor have found themselves caught between casting the city in a positive glow and drumming up a sense of urgency about its problems.

Without one overarching crisis testing Los Angeles, the top six hopefuls have cast about from topic to topic, hoping to light upon the one that speaks to the voters’ greatest anxiety.

And despite their clear differences in style and approach, they end up often agreeing with each other about some basic steps they would take: audit city departments, create more after-school programs, shake up the Police Department.

“The challenge is to define a reason the city needs you at a time when it’s not clear what it does need, or rather who,” said Susan Estrich, a USC law professor who ran Michael Dukakis’ failed presidential bid. “So what you hear about is, ‘Who do you like?’ Not, ‘Who do we need?’ ”

Denied the political benefits of a dominant crisis, some of the candidates have tried to create one--or at least the fear of one.

State Controller Kathleen Connell cautions that the city will face a financial meltdown, in part because of large police misconduct settlements. Businessman Steve Soboroff says an economic recession is around the corner.

U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra says the Rampart police scandal and the Belmont Learning Complex debacle prove that local government is not listening to the public. City Councilman Joel Wachs decries the influence of special interests at City Hall.

At the other end of the spectrum, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa has been more muted, speaking optimistically about bringing the city’s diverse populations together. And City Atty. James K. Hahn, considered to be ahead of the pack, has been the most upbeat about how Los Angeles is faring, saying that, basically, it’s in good shape.

And, their foreboding rhetoric notwithstanding, the other candidates sometimes seem to agree. At one recent forum, for instance, each was asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how broken the city is. None of the six gave Los Angeles anything worse than a 5.

The absence of a galvanizing issue also emerges in anecdotal ways. At political gatherings from Sherman Oaks to South-Central, residents complain of illegal billboards and economic malaise, of traffic and parks and schools. But the campaign does not pivot around one or two universal fears in the way that recession and crime once dominated the public stage.

Indeed, the times are demonstrably rosier than in 1993, when a disheartened city struggled to pull itself out of recession and heal the wounds from the riots that erupted in April 1992 after the Rodney G. King verdicts.

Then, Richard Riordan won the mayor’s office, pledging to be “tough enough to turn L.A. around.”

Today, the mood of Los Angeles is harder to divine. Residents are happy with their own finances, but worried about an impending economic downturn. They are distressed about the state of public education and dissatisfied with municipal services, but most reject the idea of breaking up the city.

And more Los Angeles residents still say the city is going in the right direction than in the wrong one, according to a recent Times poll.

“It’s hard to get a real feel for the pulse of the city,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

“We’ve had relatively good times,” he said. “Ethnic tension is at a low. It doesn’t mean things are hunky-dory, but people are fairly content.”

While Rampart and Belmont have most likely contributed to people’s sense of dismay with the current state of affairs, neither controversy has had a clear effect on most residents’ daily lives.

In this atmosphere, “We rarely have politicians who can interpret what’s moving through the electorate in a powerful way,” said Wayne Fields, an expert on political rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis.

“It’s much easier to keep scanning the coals and catch a current that’s going to sweep by than to think you’re going to generate a current . . . to inspire people in a certain direction.”

Nuts-and-Bolts Proposals

That was the case, to a certain extent, in the last presidential election, when Al Gore and George Bush focused more on nuts-and-bolts proposals about Medicare and tax cuts than on lofty visions for the nation, said Allan J. Lichtman, chairman of the history department at American University in Washington, D.C.

“Neither one seemed to have much of an understanding of where the country was or where it was going,” Lichtman said.

During the Los Angeles mayoral race, the candidates have fashioned messages that attempt to match their specific strengths with various city ailments--even if they aren’t yet concerns bothering people.

During a Los Angeles Daily Journal mayoral forum March 6, Wachs warned that the next leader of the city will have to confront a burgeoning secession movement in the San Fernando Valley.

“It’s not on the radar screen right now as the biggest problem, but it’s going to be,” said Wachs, a longtime city councilman who represents the Valley. “We’d better take it seriously.”

Becerra tries to tap into people’s fears that city government is ineffective at best, incompetent at worst.

“From the outside, what a great city,” said Becerra during a Feb. 27 forum at Staples Center. “But you look inside, and what do you see? Rampart, Belmont, MTA. If these three words don’t epitomize where we are in Los Angeles, I don’t know what does.”

The congressman promises to “work hard and play by the rules,” hoping to appeal to people disaffected by local politics.

At the same forum, Soboroff warned that the city would soon require a leader with credentials in the financial world: “We have a level economy, at best. Probably a recession. We need someone with business experience more than when Dick Riordan was elected.”

But there is a danger in trying to scare voters into paying attention.

When Connell started campaigning in January, she initially painted a gloomy portrait of Los Angeles, calling it a city “in crisis” and “the murder capital of the country.” (It’s not.)

Her grim outlook rang hollow, and in recent weeks she has backed away from that bleak language, focusing more on the need for a “tough fiscal watchdog” to keep City Hall in check.

Villaraigosa tries the opposite tack, attempting to motivate people with a hopeful message.

“I will be a mayor for everyone,” he told a meeting of union leaders Saturday. “Not just for the Latinos, blacks, whites, the rich or the poor--but one including everyone. The opportunity we have now is the opportunity to create a new vision for Los Angeles.”

The Riordan Challenge

Another factor muddies the equation. Even as the candidates are calling for change in the city, they’re tiptoeing around the most obvious target: the man now in the mayor’s office.

Though Riordan’s approval rating has dropped in the last year, he remains solidly popular among likely voters. Nearly two-thirds said they approve of Riordan’s leadership, according to the Times poll.

That has left the six hopefuls in an odd situation as they carefully hedge their criticism of the mayor, trying to present themselves as alternatives to the status quo without attacking Riordan himself.

“We’re not critical of the mayor,” said Ace Smith, Soboroff’s campaign manager. “We believe the mayor has done a great job in bringing the city to where it is today. The question is, ‘Who can take the work the mayor’s done to the next level?’ ”

Kam Kuwata, Hahn’s consultant, explained the tone the city attorney has tried to take: “It’s more of a surgical approach of how to fix things, rather than, ‘Let’s bomb the place.’ ”

As with most balancing acts, however, there are those who take stock of it and conclude that the effort is too subtle. In fact, some see the dominant question of the campaign to date, not as a lack of problems for the mayoral candidates to tackle, but rather as a lack of courage to go after the most intractable ones.

“I think that while the economy has been very, very good . . . underneath it are some very serious issues that people don’t want to look at,” said Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, regional director for the American Jewish Committee and a former police commissioner.

“We really are living in two different places,” Greenebaum added. “If you’re in a certain socioeconomic status, you’re in a positive universe. If not, there are families who work three or four full-time jobs. Which candidates are talking about that? I haven’t heard it.”