An ex-mayor with power, and parking

Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles, is not lost, he just doesn’t quite know where to park.

The garage beneath 10100 Santa Monica Blvd. reads “monthlies only” and there seems to be nothing to do but pull onto the small driveway that runs alongside the street. Riordan is on his way to see Haim Saban, the billionaire head of Saban Entertainment, and is running a tiny bit late.

“I guess I can leave it right here,” he says, although all appearances are to the contrary. Indeed, a few yards away, a man in an official-looking jacket and Las Vegas bouncer hair is shaking his head, shrugging his shoulders and walking toward Riordan’s Ford Explorer with the words “ya moron” all but floating above his head in a thought balloon.

Riordan quickly takes off his sunglasses and rolls down the window. “How you doin’?” the former mayor says genially. “Shall I pull it up somewhere?” And, magically, the man’s irritated expression is transformed into the earnest desire to be of service. “Just leave it right there,” he says, smiling and opening the door. “You don’t worry about a thing. It’s good to see you, Mr. Mayor.”

A day in the life of a former mayor reveals that this is the difference between Richard Riordan and most Angelenos; he can still pretty much park anywhere he wants. And he knows it.

Which may be a bit of compensation for the fact that a year ago Riordan, and many other people, thought he’d be governor by now. Instead, he remains as he ever was, a figure defined mostly by his own will -- the self-made millionaire who never really ran a business, the two-term mayor with no previous political experience and now an indefatigable operator with much influence but no political machine.

By turns frank and intentionally vague, witty and arrogantly oblivious, he continues to shine in power circles not just because he is determined to remain a player but because he remains such a striking contrast to the ho-hum, automaton nature of L.A.’s current mayor and California’s current governor. As his filled engagement calendar proves, many Angelenos still look to him for answers, while others think it’s time for him to let go. But even those who take issue with Riordan can agree that he’s interesting, a bit of crackling weather in an often hazy, somnolent political scene.

With his rich-guy’s version of Irish charm and his mayoral access, he still spends much of his time -- and money -- addressing civic and social problems. And if his ability to simply make things happen overnight has been curtailed, so, too, have the rules he must follow.

The recent brouhaha over billionaire financier Eli Broad’s attempt to persuade Theodore Mitchell, president of Occidental College, to run for the L.A. Unified School Board made a stop at Riordan’s doorstop earlier this month. Broad had dangled a $10-million donation to form a school leadership institute and, Mitchell told campus trustees, Riordan also had offered to pay for a new executive position at the college should Mitchell decide to run.

Riordan says that is not exactly the case -- he told campus trustees that should Mitchell win, he, Riordan, would find the money to fund an administrative position to take up the slack.

“It’s about the children,” he says of his involvement. More than a year out of office and Riordan’s political savvy is still mayoral. When called for an explanation of his involvement in the Occidental incident, he said, “I’m headed to Las Familias, come meet me and I’ll tell you.” So he is able to make his statement standing in the cramped play area of a skid row family service center. “Look around,” he says. “Would Ted Mitchell have been good for the children? Would a school leadership program help the children? That’s the issue, not who’s paying for what.”

Riordan says he is simply “someone who gets things done,” and he resolutely believes that if you bring the right sort of people together in a room, and relieve them of “unnecessary” regulation, all sorts of things will change for the better.

“You get some people with resources together and let them own the problem,” is his answer during the course of one day to problems ranging from education and child care to housing to airport security.

Riordan spends a lot of his time these days trying to arrange such meetings, trying to coax the wealthy and the influential into what he considers the best course of action. Yes, there is the very real possibility that he may park himself long enough to start a weekly newspaper in Los Angeles -- along with his ever-vilified “latte liberals,” there are few things he hates more than the Los Angeles Times, which he considers, among other things, pro-Palestinian and anti-L.A. -- but for the time being he seems perpetually in motion, helping people make the “right” connections. Tooling around town on a fine fall day, Richard Riordan is a charming, hard-working, appointment-keeping, phone-call-returning political yenta.

It is strange that a man who so loathes The Times would agree to be shadowed for a day by a reporter from that very paper. But at about 8:40 a.m., it all suddenly makes sense; he is going to kill her. The plan is to meet at his house in Brentwood and bike the five or six miles to the beach for a breakfast meeting at Shutters. What wasn’t mentioned is that he wants to do this in 15 minutes.

Rattling down the ramp from the Santa Monica Pier on his bike, he nods toward the nearby hedgerow of chess tables that face the beach, empty in the early hours. “This is one of my favorite places in the city,” he says. Riordan has long been a chess player and aficionado. “I brought Garry Kasparov down here a few weeks ago. He was a gentlemen, he withdrew after six moves.”

He is meeting with Ben Austin, one of his former deputies. Austin is a clear-eyed, clear-skinned young man who treats the 72-year-old Riordan in a fond, deferential way, as if he were Mr. Chips. He works now for filmmaker and children’s advocate Rob Reiner as part of the Los Angeles First Five, the Proposition 10 commission that will dole out $100 million in an effort to provide universal preschool. Austin wants Riordan to help the new director navigate the land-mined turf of child-care and early-education agencies.

“With that kind of money, you gotta watch out for the poverty pimps,” says Riordan, agreeing to help. Across the table, Austin laughs and winces a bit at the term, which he has heard many times before. Riordan settles into a rant against what he considers nonsensical regulations -- including the state-mandated ratios of children to caregivers -- that make child care so expensive.

“Four infants to one worker is ridiculous,” he says. “Why not make it six infants to one, get more kids in that way.” When he’s asked if he has ever cared for six, or even four, infants at a time, his tone turns steely. “So, you’d keep poor kids out of day care to preserve perfection? The pursuit of perfection is what keeps things from getting done.”

“The pursuit of perfection” is one of Riordan’s betes noirs. He will rail against it during this late October day in reference to housing development, airport security, police department reforms and the restaurant business. Overregulation is, in his opinion, at the root of many social ills.

“I’m a knee-jerk liberal,” says Austin earnestly, leaning across the table. “But the mayor cares more about poor people than anyone I know.”

Less than half an hour after pedaling home from breakfast, he is changed and driving to a lunch at UCLA, after which he will speak to a graduate class in public policy. Sliding his cell phone into its hands-free holder, he calls his assistant, Jeannette Chavez.

“Hi, it’s me,” he says. “Anyone call?” Sally Ride, he is told, and Broad. “He wants to know if you’re going into Hollywood for Halloween and can he tag along?” When is Halloween? Tomorrow. “Oh, OK, sure. We’ll get some pictures of Eli with a transvestite.”

Turning onto the campus, a flock of academics is waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the staff mess hall. He pulls over, although it is a red zone, and apologizes for being late. “Oh, please,” says Amy Zegart, assistant professor of policy studies, “we’re just so glad you could come. But we’ll need to get someone to park your car for you.” And he is ushered into the faculty dining room.

Around the table, introductions are made, gratitude and admiration for the former mayor expressed and more than one person says it would be nice if Riordan had made it onto the ballot. Many people have said this, and, in fact, one poll concluded that the former mayor was more popular than either Bill Simon and Gray Davis. When asked earlier what he thinks about this, Riordan demurred. “It’s easy for people to say they would like me better now,” he says, laughing. “They just don’t know me as well as they know the other guy.” The predictable follow-up question -- will he run again -- is answered in the predictable way -- no, no, he doesn’t think so.

But around this table he has many opinions on many subjects. Airport security would be more efficient if one person were allowed to “own” the problem, to make decisions without running through the labyrinth of procedure and red tape, without having to answer to anyone. “If some guy walks by and his pilot’s uniform doesn’t fit right, someone should be able to move on that,” he said.

The housing shortage could be alleviated by more condominiums, but that won’t happen until regulations “out of Sacramento” are done away with. He is very concerned that the county tax for trauma centers won’t pass (it does). “If people are worried about our anti-terrorism strategy, they should worry about that.”

After an hour in the classroom, during which he speaks about many of the same things in much the same way, Riordan heads home. It is a beautiful house, just off Sunset Boulevard, with a backyard chapel and full-size trampoline. There are lots of toys in the family room, the kind kids actually play with, and way more photos of the children and grandchildren than of Dick and his wife, Nancy Daly Riordan, with political luminaries, although there are plenty of these as well.

It is a house that would be lovely to live in, except for the intercom. There are phones everywhere, constantly ringing, and every few minutes a disembodied voice -- Chavez or his wife -- falls from the ceiling. “Mr. Mayor, pick up Line 1 please,” “Dick, can you get Line 2?”

Riordan obeys or ignores these requests, depending on their urgency and his own state of business, but it is obvious that these voices, speaking to him like Joan’s saints, are as natural to him as the help who quietly stock his refrigerator with goods from Whole Foods Market.

After a cup of coffee -- not surprisingly, the man drinks a lot of coffee -- he’s off again, to that meeting with Saban. Or rather the meeting he has arranged for Art Levitt, chief executive of the movie-related Internet company Fandango, to have with Saban. Levitt is part of Project Communicate, an effort by some Hollywood heavy-hitters to build a public relations campaign for Israel, which, they believe, is being unfairly cast in the American imagination as the Evil Empire to Palestine’s plucky rebels.

Saban is Israeli and the largest single contributor to the Democratic Party, Riordan explains, so the fit seems pretty good. He too is happy to see Riordan and ushers him into a large room with a conference table, a living-room suite of sofa and chairs, a bathroom and a wall of TV screens.

Levitt is not here and, before he arrives, Riordan has something he would say to Saban, in private. “Let’s go into your office,” he says.

“But this is my office,” says Saban, puzzled, unconsciously offering the former mayor, who has a two-story library at home, a lesson in relativity. It is essentially a pitch meeting and Riordan stays long enough to see Levitt explain the project, but not long enough to see what Saban will say about his support.

“I think that went well,” he says, stopping for a moment in the reception area to admire the jaw-dropping view of the L.A. Country Club golf course. “Saban’s a very smart guy. As you see. He has real money.”

Back in the car, he calls Chavez and asks her to call the woman who heads the East Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club. During the question-and-answer period in the UCLA class, a student had thanked Riordan for his support of the organization, and when he asked how it was doing, she admitted that it was still barely hanging on. He told the young woman he would look into it, and so he does.

At home, the family room is laid out with coffee and pastries for yet another meeting. Riordan, who still owns downtown L.A.’s Original Pantry, has called together a coterie of high-profile restaurant types to discuss the possible expansion of a famous local eatery. The meeting lasts almost two hours; everyone speaks carefully, except the former mayor, who, after listening to many possibilities and explanations, responds with questions that are quite blunt.

There is not much, it seems, that the former mayor is afraid to say and that is both admirable and regrettable. As much as the American mythos prizes frankness, there is also honor -- and political gain -- in realizing that there are many sides to most issues, that one person’s vision of a vain “pursuit of perfection” is another’s sincere attempt at ensuring justice.

After his disastrous showing in the gubernatorial primary, some analysts said Riordan had not tailored his message to his audience -- the conservative side of the GOP.

The benefit of life for Richard Riordan today is that now he can tailor his audience rather than his message.

That and the great parking.