Platinum Handshake

An appeals court ruling this week turning Omar Bradley out of office--again--was a really tough break for Compton’s once, once-again and not-anymore mayor. After all, last month he’d managed to convince a judge that he lost his bid for a third term because his name appeared second on the ballot. As a result, Bradley’s long-time political nemesis, prosecutor Eric Perrodin, the man Bradley once tried to pound to a pulp on the street outside the City Council’s chambers, squeaked into Bradley’s throne, er, seat last June by a margin of 281 votes. (Don’t tell Bill Jones and Dick Riordan, whose names appear second and seventh on the ballot for next week’s Republican gubernatorial primary, behind Bill Simon in the No. 1 position.)

With the trial court’s finding that Bradley was, in effect, swindled out of his rightful return to power, Bradley thought he had another four years in the bag. But the appeals court wouldn’t buy the “ballot primacy” argument and threw out the lower court ruling that had restored Bradley to office. With the California Supreme Court’s decision Thursday denying Bradley’s emergency appeal, the gig may finally be finished for the man who has likened himself to the Roman emperor, Augustus.

The comparison is a strained one, and not just because Augustus ruled for some 40 years to Bradley’s eight. For one thing, Augustus didn’t have to worry about paying attorneys. But wait, neither does Bradley.

The tab for his failed legal gambit runs to $840,000. Seem a tad high? Well, consider that senior litigators can command $450 per hour, that paralegals fetch $100 per hour and that all the election law experts hired--the folks who dreamed up the argument that Bradley’s place on the ballot sank his reelection bid--don’t come cheap.

Still, if Bradley has lost, he’s not nearly as big a loser as the 93,000 other residents of Compton, who earlier this week learned that they will be footing the bill.

There’s no use daydreaming about what $840,000 could do to upgrade Compton’s five parks, how many new books and computers that money could buy for the city’s one library, the potholes that could be repaired and the trees that could be planted along streets. That’s because Bradley’s City Council cronies blew their former (we think) leader a giant air kiss Tuesday, voting to pay his legal bills. A fitting capstone to a memorable career in public service. Recall that Bradley was the guy who disbanded the Compton Police Department, tried to impose a gag rule on city employees because someone had called him a tyrant--never mind that he fancied himself a “gangster mayor”--and insisted that, since being mayor is only a part-time job, he could run the Compton schools at the same time.

But as Augustus learned when German troops vanquished his army near the Rhine River, the party can’t go on forever. It’s too bad that, unless the City Council comes to its senses and reverses its decision, taxpayers will be paying off Bradley’s legal bill for nearly that long.