Going but Not to Be Forgotten

When Councilman Nate Holden leaves office Monday, there will be one immediate effect on the Los Angeles City Council, his colleagues agree: The meetings will be shorter.

The loquacious councilman gained a reputation for dragging the morning council meetings well into the lunch hour by demanding discussion on a variety of items that other members were prepared to dispose of without debate. Week after week, as his council colleagues sighed heavily and sat back in their leather chairs, Holden has peppered city staff with questions about the worth of various programs.

“Sometimes I wanted to wring his neck,” said county Supervisor Gloria Molina, who sat next to him when she was a councilwoman in the late 1980s. “I was one of those who would say, ‘You’re being impossible and raising nonsense issues.’ ”

Wily, irrepressible and often outrageous, Holden has established an enduring role during his 16 years on the council with his embrace of unpopular stances, his desire for the limelight and his penchant for controversies.

During his tenure, the onetime boxer and self-described bull in a china shop has accused the Police Commission of being a kangaroo court and once said two Jewish council members were acting like members of the Westside Ku Klux Klan. He racked up ethics violations for breaking fund-raising limits and fended off sexual harassment allegations by former employees. He was photographed with topless dancers during a 1991 city trip to South Korea. And he fought with mayors, most notably Richard Riordan, only to later campaign alongside them.

One Last Controversy

In his waning days as a councilman, Holden has kicked up one more debate, this time by proposing that the city rename Crenshaw Boulevard after the late Mayor Tom Bradley. The council will vote on the motion today.The 10th District seat “will be a lot more boring, a lot less entertaining and hopefully a lot more productive” without Holden, said a community activist, Madison Shockley, who unsuccessfully ran against Holden twice.

The 74-year-old councilman said every cause he has fought for has been on behalf of the mid-city residents he represents.

“I don’t seek the attention,” he said during a recent interview in his office, where boxes of mementos were stacked up in the halls. “It just happens to turn out that way.”

Unfazed by the storms of his political career, Holden said he is leaving City Hall with no resentment and no regrets.

“It’s been a good ride and I enjoyed every moment of it,” he said.

Born Nathan Nathaniel Holden in Macon, Ga., in 1929, Holden said he grasped the power of politics at the age of 6 while listening to the radio commercials of segregationist candidates.

“I discovered that politicians could be cruel and harsh,” he said, “and I didn’t think they should be that way.”

His parents separated when he was 10 and Holden moved with his mother to New Jersey, where he said he was forced to learn how to brawl.

“The name of the game was to fight your way out of the ghetto,” he said.

Holden got so good at fighting that he took up amateur boxing, eventually beating all his opponents and going professional, only to be disqualified after his first fight because he was too young.

At 16, he lied about his age and joined the Army. After serving as a member of the military police in post-World War II Germany and Italy, Holden returned and tried to take drafting classes. He said he was discouraged by Army administrators, who told him an African American would not be able to get an engineering job.

Self-Made Engineer

Holden didn’t listen to them. Eventually, he earned degrees in physics and engineering at night school and was hired by Hughes Aircraft. He ended up working in the aerospace industry for 17 years. Often he was the only black in the room.

“He’s a fighter,” said State Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), who worked as Holden’s chief of staff during his first term at City Hall. “If I was ever in a bar fight, I would sure hope that Nate Holden was on a barstool next to me.”

Holden’s first foray into politics came as a leader of the California Democratic Council, a liberal reform group that protested the Vietnam War. In 1968, he made a bid for Congress as an antiwar candidate. When he gave his first political speech to a group of supporters packed into a stuffy living room, a case of the nerves and the heat caused him to faint.

“I went, ker-plonk!” Holden said.

He lost that race, along with another bid for Congress and a campaign for the Assembly before winning a seat in the state Senate in 1974. Instead of running for a second term, he tried again for Congress, and again failed.

Holden worked as a top deputy for then-county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, made a few more tries at public office and finally won a spot on the City Council in 1987, beating then-Mayor Bradley’s handpicked candidate.

Once in office, Holden modeled his approach on that of Supervisor Hahn, whose attention to constituents made him a legendary figure in his district. Holden lobbied for improved services, often berating department managers at public meetings for failing to do more. He even followed street sweepers as they drove through his district, chewing them out if they missed a day.

During his 1989 mayoral bid (one of his two failed attempts to capture the office), Holden launched a gun buy-back program, offering $300 to anyone who would turn in an assault rifle. The effort got 130 weapons off the street, garnered him national media coverage and depleted his campaign treasury. It was, Holden said, inspired by God.

It also reinforced a frustration among some of his colleagues, who have complained over the years that the councilman’s hyperbole sometimes undermines his deeds. In late May, the councilman railed against Mayor James K. Hahn’s proposed budget plan, saying it would cause cuts in city programs like swimming pools and libraries that the mayor’s father, the late Supervisor Hahn, fought to create.

The mayor’s sister, Councilwoman Janice Hahn, snapped back.

“Don’t you use my father’s name!” she scolded Holden angrily during a council meeting. “I know more than you what he believed in and what he cared about.”

Later, Hahn said she will miss Holden -- even though she said he can be exasperating -- because he always managed to engage other council members.

“He does have a way of getting your goat,” the councilwoman said. “He would say, ‘You shouldn’t let me know where it’s tied up.’ ”

But even when tempers flared, Holden never seemed to take the arguments personally, many noted.

“Even times when I was very mean and unkind to him, he seemed to enjoy the fight,” Molina said. “I have never met anyone with a thicker skin.”

In addition, some of those who have watched Holden over the years say that the councilman often used bombast as a distraction, encouraging some people to see him as a comic figure when in fact he was a canny political player.

“Sitting next to him, I probably learned more from Nate Holden than from any other member,” Hahn said. “He would say, ‘Know the rules. You can really use them.’ ”

Case in point: the behind-the-scenes maneuvering he did during this spring’s budget fight between the mayor and the council.

Mayor Hahn had vowed to veto the council’s version of the budget, calling it bad for public safety. But the mayor waited until his Wednesday 5 p.m. deadline to actually sign the veto, a move that seemed to force the council to wait two days until its next meeting to vote to overrule the mayor.

Knowing the Rules

Council leaders did not want to wait, since several members were supposed to be absent at the next meeting. So Holden came up with a plan. Don’t adjourn the Wednesday morning council meeting, he told Council President Alex Padilla. Just call a recess, and assemble everyone back in the chamber Wednesday evening to vote on the override.

The mayor’s veto stood for less than 20 minutes.

Come Tuesday, Holden said, he plans to retire from public life. He’ll work on projects that interest him, like efforts to help inner-city youths, but insists he won’t be hanging around the council chamber.

And his absence will make a big difference, he added with a grin: “You won’t have any exciting news going on in City Hall now.”