Riordan Seeks Education Cabinet Post

Former Los Angeles Mayor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan has interviewed for a top education post with Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger and is scouting houses here in the event he is offered a job, according to two people familiar with Riordan’s prospects.

Riordan is a friend and Brentwood neighbor of Schwarzenegger and campaigned for him during the recall -- accompanying him on the four-day bus tour leading up to the Oct. 7 election. Riordan, who has been active in seeking to reform the Los Angeles Unified School District, headed a 24-member panel that advised the future governor on ways to improve education.

“He is definitely interested in working in a formal way for Arnold and he has talked to Arnold and he’s talked to Arnold’s people,” said a friend of Riordan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Schwarzenegger’s transition team would not comment on Riordan’s candidacy.

Possible appointments would include secretary for education, a Cabinet position that advises the governor on education issues. The education secretary also analyzes legislation and makes recommendations on what the governor should sign or veto.

The post is “closest to [Riordan’s] heart,” the friend said. Others said Riordan may take a less formal advisory role.

Riordan, 73, would not comment.

Although the mayor of Los Angeles has scant formal power over public schools, Riordan sought to champion education during his tenure and helped recruit and bankroll a new wave of school board members to win election four years ago over candidates supported by the teachers union.

Earlier this year, two of those Riordan-backed candidates lost their reelection bids and the board returned to a majority elected with union support.

As a two-term mayor, he attended panels on the management of public schools.

Shortly before he left office in 2001, he traveled to Washington with some other big-city mayors -- most of them Democrats -- to lobby for more federal aid for urban schools.

A multimillionaire, Riordan has made educational causes a focus of his philanthropic giving.

Schwarzenegger’s education advisor will assume an ambitious portfolio. The Cabinet post, however, has limited authority and the person in that job often jockeys for visibility with the state’s elected superintendent of public instruction, a post now held by Jack O’Connell.

Aides say the governor-elect wants to roll back regulations that he believes hamper local school boards, with a view toward giving school systems more autonomy.

“As things stand now, local school boards have to navigate a bureaucratic maze of byzantine funding formulas and categorical programs,” said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger. “The governor-elect wants to cut through the bureaucracy ... and whomever the governor-elect selects to be his point person on education will be expected to take that charge and run with it.”

Though Schwarzenegger has called for rooting out waste and imposing budget caps, he has pledged to spare public education. Children, he often said on the campaign trail, will be given first call on the treasury.

“My first budget priority is education,” Schwarzenegger said in reply to a pre-election questionnaire from The Times. He added: “I believe we can bring our schools and students back to the top if we can continue to invest in education and stay focused on results.”

Schwarzenegger’s aides would not comment on when he plans to announce his choice for education secretary.

But the governor-elect hopes to make key appointments before he takes office Nov. 17, the transition team said.