Riordan Endorsement a Guessing Game to the End

Seven years, 10 months and two weeks into his eight-year tenure, Mayor Richard Riordan--the venture capitalist who wanted to run Los Angeles more like a business--has come face-to-face with one of the toughest decisions of any CEO: picking a successor.

And like many top executives before him, the mayor has been struggling with the question of whom to endorse. Should James K. Hahn ascend the ladder from his long career as city attorney to take over the mayor’s suite? Or does former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa deserve a shot, bringing a new face and style to City Hall?

Riordan is scheduled to end the weeks of speculation, personal soul-searching and a fierce lobbying campaign by some of the city’s most powerful figures when he announces his choice today.

The mayor hopes his backing will not only provide a crucial boost for his would-be successor in a very close race, but help continue his unfinished push for a larger Police Department, better public schools and improved efficiency at City Hall. In short, Riordan would like this last major act of his administration to strengthen his legacy in the city’s history.

If those matters aren’t weighty enough, friends and confidants say Riordan also has been pondering how the choice might affect California’s fractured Republican Party; the burgeoning political power of Latinos; and his own, still less than likely, run for governor of California.

The pursuit of Riordan has been relentless--shadowing the mayor on his Mexican vacation, cropping up at a private club that is a favorite haunt and even emerging at his 71st birthday celebration. The more Riordan has talked and received advice, the less clear his ultimate decision has seemed. As of Tuesday, aides were still preparing for the announcement to go either way.

Although people close to him agree that Riordan makes such major decisions on his own, he has never been one for private brooding. Instead, the mayor has let himself be questioned and complimented nearly every day since April 10, when voters eliminated his choice for mayor, businessman Steve Soboroff, and thrust Villaraigosa and Hahn into the June 5 runoff.

Wealthy and influential friends, such as billionaire businessman Eli Broad, have made the case for Villaraigosa. It didn’t hurt the latter’s chances that Broad and Riordan and their wives were among four couples vacationing together recently in Acapulco. But Hahn has his trump card as well in Bill Wardlaw, the tough-talking lawyer who was once Riordan’s consiglieri. After a meeting at one of Riordan’s favorite haunts, the staid downtown California Club, Wardlaw seemed to have pushed the tide back in Hahn’s favor.

There has been no fiercer game-within-the-game than the one for Riordan’s ear in the whirlwind seven-week mayoral runoff.

“It is still completely undecided, but it looks like it’s moving toward Hahn after being with Villaraigosa,” one source close to the mayor said, just two days ago. Within hours, however, another Riordan confidant came to the opposite conclusion, suggesting that Riordan was on the verge of tapping Villaraigosa. And even in Riordan’s final hours before announcing his decision, at least one longtime backer was proposing that he stay out of the race altogether.

Aides were so flummoxed by Riordan’s self-imposed Wednesday deadline and his attendant inability to make a decision that they began to make plans for either a Hahn or a Villaraigosa endorsement--and a tour of the city, with either, to symbolize the passing of the torch.

It has been an accepted truth of the Villaraigosa-Hahn showdown that the mayor is the most important figure not yet committed to either side. The backing of the moderate Republican is expected to give an imprimatur of safety and respectability to either candidate, particularly among the many moderate-to-conservative voters who supported Soboroff or Councilman Joel Wachs in the first round of the election.

Riordan had hoped it would be a choice he would never have to make. He endorsed Soboroff and spent $141,703 of his own money in an effort to push his onetime senior advisor and Recreation and Parks Commission president into the runoff.

When Soboroff fell less than 5% short of making the runoff, Riordan was left without a horse in the mayoral race. He did little to hide his skepticism of the two liberal Democrats who remained.

“They are not strong managers or CEOs,” Riordan told reporters the day after the election. “They are very good politicians, very good leaders, very good people. But when I took over there was no confidence in the city. . . . I think there is farther to go.”

Above all, Riordan would like to feel that his successor will welcome his ideas and input.

“Before he was mayor, he was a very active civic leader and he wants to continue to be that,” said Clint Reilly, a longtime advisor who ran Riordan’s first mayoral campaign. “Having a relationship with the new mayor is a very important part of that, along with a commitment to education reform and sound government and putting more police on the street.”

Riordan has said privately many times that he has little confidence in Hahn, depicting the city attorney as ineffectual and a poor manager of a mediocre city attorney’s office.

Although he knows Villaraigosa, the relationship has been more distant, because the former assemblyman made his name mostly in Sacramento. Nevertheless, Riordan has questioned Villaraigosa’s credentials as well, musing to friends about whether he has the maturity and toughness to be a good manager.

Critical in Riordan’s thinking is who the would-be mayors surround themselves with. Both Villaraigosa and Hahn have strong allies.

When Riordan jetted off to Acapulco for four days this month, he was joined not only by Broad, but by former Universal Studios chief Frank Biondi and former NBC executive John Agoglia, appointed by Riordan to head the city’s Airport Commission, and the four men’s wives. Broad and Biondi are both strong Villaraigosa backers, with Broad giving $100,000 to the state Democratic Party which, in turn, launched a massive phone, mail and door-to-door campaign for Villaraigosa. Nancy Daly Riordan, the mayor’s wife, has also been a Villaraigosa stalwart.

The four couples stayed at the home of TV mogul Haim Saban--giving ample opportunity for a Villaraigosa-fest. Instead, Broad insists, they spent most of their time sunning and reading.

“The subject [of the election] did come up and a lot of other things too,” Broad said. “But I didn’t bend his ear at every meal and every time we were together.”

Broad said the mayor has gleaned an important message from the mere presence of so many prominent business leaders and small-business owners in the Villaraigosa camp.

“There is no question that [Riordan] believes--whether it’s myself or [supermarket magnate Ron] Burkle or Saban or a number of small-business people, as well--that Antonio certainly won’t have the door at City Hall slammed in our faces, while he just listens to people from the Latino community or labor,” Broad explained. “He feels like [Villaraigosa] will be a mayor for everyone.”

While much of his City Hall staff has leaned slightly to Hahn, Villaraigosa has had another strong backer inside the mayor’s office--Ben Austin, deputy mayor for public affairs, who has persistently pushed the Villaraigosa cause, according to those familiar with the deliberations.

Riordan has also been mindful of the longer sweep of history and the inevitability that a Latino will one day be elected mayor. “Do you want to embrace change,” one Riordan advisor who favors Villaraigosa asked, “or fight it?”

Wardlaw was not about to let such sentiments go unanswered, however. As chairman of the Hahn campaign and Riordan’s longtime top advisor, Wardlaw had the advantage of knowing better than anyone how Riordan thinks. But he also has endured a protracted falling out with Riordan, mostly over the two men’s selection of different mayoral candidates--Riordan with Soboroff and Wardlaw with Hahn.

No one except the two knows precisely how wide that rift remains, but it has closed enough that--in the final days before Riordan’s choice--the mayor met with Wardlaw more than once.

It was after last Friday’s meeting with Wardlaw at the California Club that one of the mayor’s associates said, “It looks like he is moving toward Hahn.”

That day the mayor gave his final State of the City address Riordan talked about reforming the public schools, stressing that change could not come if a leader is too beholden to the teachers union. Advantage Hahn, some said. After all, Villaraigosa once worked as an organizer for the United Teachers of Los Angeles.

Riordan acknowledged his disappointment at not being able to sustain growth in the Police Department. Hadn’t he been displeased, aides noted, when the city attorney backed a three-day workweek for police officers, while attempting to win the police union’s endorsement? Advantage Villaraigosa.

But Hahn had the good sense, at least, to show up for the mayor’s valedictory. Villaraigosa, meanwhile, was at a meeting with nonprofit development groups in South-Central Los Angeles.

An aide said that Riordan would have preferred to have Villaraigosa in attendance. Villaraigosa tried to make up by calling later in the day.

But it was unclear whether Villaraigosa’s repeated praise for the mayor would win the ingratiation derby. Hahn had, a mayoral advisor said, taken the lead when he quipped to Riordan that polls showed 94% of voters prefer an end to term limits. That way, he joked, Riordan could simply stay in office.

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Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.