Secession Fight Revs Hahn Up

The move to separate the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood from Los Angeles has energized the administration of Mayor James K. Hahn, sharpening its focus by giving it the specific goal of winning an election -- a familiar challenge for a mayor who has won six citywide contests.

But critics say the campaign has also encouraged the mayor and his aides to hide plans that might cost Hahn crucial votes in Tuesday’s election.

Over the last eight months, the mayor has mounted an aggressive campaign to defeat the secession efforts. Once seen as laconic and rarely spied outside City Hall, he now holds three or four media events a day, many in the Valley, talking about improving city services, filling potholes and creating neighborhood councils.

Hahn has helped raise millions of dollars and directed that money toward a blistering advertising campaign highlighting the risks of breaking up the city. He is actively engaged in the political strategy of the campaign, talking to consultants at least daily and overseeing the mail and television ads.

At the same time, he has avoided talking publicly about an upcoming 10-day business trip to Asia, where he will lead a delegation of public and private leaders -- including some donors to the anti-secession campaign -- on an expensive trip partly funded by the city and aimed at boosting the local economy. He has tried to keep under wraps a $1,000-per-person fund-raiser for his officeholder account scheduled after the election. (These accounts are used by elected Los Angeles officials to pay for activity related to city business and for communication with constituents.)

And, sources say, as soon as the election is over, Hahn and his aides will figure out who was with them on secession -- and who was not -- as they approve appointments to city commissions and evaluate upcoming city contracts.

Richard Close, a leader of the Valley secession effort, said the trip, for instance, is evidence that Hahn is preparing to dole out favors after the election.

The Asia trip, Close said, “is clearly a reward ... for those people who fought against a Valley city. One thing is for sure, I wasn’t invited. I would welcome the opportunity to go on a trip with the mayor.”

In an interview, Hahn defended his post-election day plans. He said his long-term goals include making the city friendlier to business and residents by continuing many of the initiatives he began this year. Moreover, he said he will encourage those who pushed the secession efforts to join him in improving the city.

He also acknowledged that the campaign gave his administration focus over the last few months, and he said he has enjoyed the battle. In his first year, some critics charged that Hahn did little to demonstrate his leadership of Los Angeles.

“It’s been a healthy public debate,” he said. “It keeps our eye on the ball.... I think it was a real motivation for us to do things we wanted to make city government more responsive.”

The mayor, who has never lost a citywide election, said campaigns are exhilarating. “You know you’re alive when you’re in one,” he said.

For months, Hahn has merged the campaigns to improve Los Angeles and to keep the city together into a single effort.

He has addressed residents, business leaders and city department managers, sounding a similar theme to those varied groups. He has pushed department heads to deliver more efficient city services, and advocated lowering business taxes. His administration established a housing trust fund in an effort to create more affordable housing. Of late, he has trumpeted his appointment of William J. Bratton to head the LAPD, a move that has proved popular citywide and especially in the Valley.

As the mayor touts those efforts, he ends his speeches on a similar note. “There’s only one threat to all of this I’ve been talking about,” he told the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce recently, “and that is secession.”

His opponents, meanwhile, complain bitterly that the mayor is only motivated by politics and that his goal is less about improving city services than about protecting the downtown business interests of the city. They say the mayor uses scare tactics to persuade people that smaller cities created by secession would be financially crippled and that the rest of Los Angeles would suffer as well.

“They have run a campaign based on fear, half-information and innuendo,” said Richard Katz, a leader of the Valley secession movement.

In addition to their criticism of what he has said, secession supporters say Hahn also has shied from topics that could hurt his standing with the public at this delicate political time.

The trip to Asia, for example, was meant to be kept quiet until after the election. Public officials who are going will cost taxpayers about $450,000, and though the executives who accompany them will pay their ways, some people say Hahn’s invitation will give them entree into relationships with Asian companies. The mayor’s office will not identify the executives who may accompany Hahn, saying it is not final.

Secession advocates believe that seats on the trip will go to those who helped the mayor fight secession.

Hahn’s officeholder fund-raiser, scheduled for the week after the election, will include many of those who have given to the mayor’s anti-secession campaign, L.A. United. Advisors to the mayor said they did not want to hold the event before the election because they needed to raise money for the campaign.

But one result of scheduling the event after Tuesday is it avoids media coverage that could bolster secessionists’ view that City Hall is in the grips of well-heeled private interests.

Close of the Valley secession group said he thinks the mayor should pledge not to take money from individuals or firms that contract with the city. “Otherwise,” he said, “it just smells.”

Whether the mayor and his staff will retaliate against those who opposed his efforts to keep the city whole remains unclear. The mayor denies it. But as someone close to him said: “Will Richard Katz get a commission appointment? I don’t think so.”

After next week, Hahn’s moves will principally be dictated by the outcome: If either Valley or Hollywood secession passes, he will preside over the dismantling of his own city, a personally and politically devastating prospect. But if the breakup efforts fail, he will be confronted with the question of whether to forgive or to exact vengeance.

“I think there’s a tug-of-war in City Hall between those who believe that when you win a war and defeat an enemy, that enemy is vanquished and you don’t have to do anything for them,” said veteran political consultant Harvey Englander. “There are others at City Hall who believe the Marshall Plan the mayor has put together is going to continue and be even stronger.”

Hahn disputes that “everything’s going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight” on election day. “Nothing’s going to disappear,” he said. “At the end of the day, I hope that people in the secession movement pat themselves on the back.... They [gave] City Hall a swift kick in the rear end and got City Hall to be more responsive.”

Hahn’s new forcefulness has won over some skeptics, even as the anti-secession campaign has given him the opportunity to build bridges with many powerful people in the city who supported his opponent, Antonio Villaraigosa, in the mayoral race.

Labor, for instance, has mended fences with Hahn in the effort to keep Los Angeles united and looks forward to warmer relations in the coming year.

Secession, said Miguel Contreras, head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, “gave us the working relationship that we have. I have the ability to call him directly or his top deputies. We’re at the table with him.”

Contreras and others said they have issues of their own that they want the mayor to address. Chief among those is the possibility of expanding the 15-member City Council to shrink the size of districts and broaden representation around the city.

Ken Lombard, president of Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s development company and the Department of Water and Power commission president, praised the mayor’s campaign for being inclusive and lauded Hahn for indicating that he will continue to reach out to people after election day. Lombard and many other African Americans were angry with Hahn for rejecting former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks’ bid for a second term. But Lombard and Johnson agreed to help the mayor defeat secession, saying they were putting the Parks issue aside.

Others got on board for other reasons. Some simply didn’t believe that Hahn could build a strong enough coalition on his own. This was particularly true in March after a Times poll found that nearly half of voters citywide supported the Valley secession efforts. Those polls have since turned around.

But those close to the mayor say his ability to lead a tough campaign is underestimated. In his mayoral campaign, for example, Hahn used tough ads to help derail Villaraigosa’s candidacy. Four years earlier, he trounced a candidate supported by former Mayor Richard Riordan in a city attorney election.

Even the mayor conceded that his anti-secession campaign required a kick-start in March. His decision on the police chief had alienated part of his strongest political base at the same time that he needed to bring African American leaders and others together to raise money to fight the proposed city breakup.

Aides say those were dark days in City Hall as the mayor’s effort to defeat secession was being criticized and he was essentially telling Los Angeles to trust him on the Police Department.

Hahn’s recent selection of former New York City Police Commissioner Bratton to head the LAPD, however, has helped boost the mayor’s approval ratings. He is proudly taking his new chief around the city, saying repeatedly that Los Angeles will become safer. It hasn’t hurt the mayor’s anti-secession battle. “Some people are saying that Bratton was chosen for political reasons -- absolutely not,” said Kam Kuwata, a political consultant to Hahn. “Will there be a political benefit from that? I think we will see there probably is.”