L.A. Mayor Plays Constructive Role in Contract Discourse

As writers and studios reached a contract settlement Friday, Mayor Richard J. Riordan immediately turned his attention to the damage an actors’ strike this summer could inflict on Southern California’s economy.

In a telephone interview from Acapulco, where he was on vacation, Riordan said he would remind actors and studio chiefs that a strike would harm not just the entertainment industry but also restaurants and other businesses that depend on Hollywood money.

That is precisely the approach Riordan adopted in recent weeks--a tactic that earned him praise for what some participants saw as a limited but constructive role in averting a writers’ walkout.

“The biggest mitigating factor was Mayor Riordan,” said Christopher Dixon, an analyst at UBS Warburg in New York. “Everyone was well aware of the potential impact a strike would have on the L.A. economy after the mayor’s presentation in front of Paramount Studios.”

With his final term in office coming to an end in eight weeks, the public relations blitz has kept Riordan a highly visible figure in the city. It also has given him the satisfaction of playing what, by all accounts, has been a constructive role in the Hollywood labor talks.

“I feel good because every place I go in town, people are thanking me for being involved--particularly from the industry,” he said.

Early this year, Riordan told associates he wanted to be a “shuttle diplomat” between the studios and the unions. But aides persuaded him that he could be more constructive by focusing public attention on the economic impact of a strike, said Deputy Mayor Ben Austin.

To illustrate how the pain would spread beyond Hollywood, Riordan has appeared before banks of news cameras with a dry cleaner, a florist and owners of a coffee shop and an auto repair garage. A strike, he warned, could have pushed the entire region into recession.

“It is not just entertainment that would suffer, but thousands of people who live and work in this city, who pay their taxes and spend money to support hundreds of other industries and tens of thousands of workers,” he said.

Last month, Riordan released an economic study commissioned by his office. It found that prolonged strikes by writers and actors could cost 81,900 jobs and $6.9 billion in income.

The $30,000 report, written by the Milken Institute of Santa Monica and Sebago Associates Inc. of Marina del Rey, enabled Riordan to put concrete numbers behind the otherwise abstract warnings of economic harm.

With scant news emerging directly from the table where the Writers Guild of America and studios were negotiating, Riordan also was able to make himself a major factor in the news coverage. His office hired a consulting firm, Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, to coordinate the publicity campaign.

Among other things, aides said, Riordan’s warnings offered “political cover” to contract negotiators, protecting each side from accusations of caving in to the other side. Describing his role in the actors’ talks, Riordan said, “We’ll keep going the way we were and just let the negotiators and the world know there are people not represented at the bargaining table; and they are flesh-and-blood people who are going to be hurt by a strike.”