First Terms, Second Looks

First terms have challenged L.A.’s last four mayors. They had to contend with big-city bureaucracy, a strong and independent-minded City Council and an institutionally weak mayoral office, though the new City Charter, adopted in 1999, has added muscle to the post. Then there were unforeseen natural disasters. So comparing mayoral achievement isn’t a fair game. Still, Opinion asked political analysts and L.A. historians what each considered the most notable first-term achievements of the last four mayors.

Sam Yorty

[ 1961-1973 ]

Better known for his complaints about how weak his office was, Yorty’s biggest first-term achievement was dumping garbage pickup rules that required separating paper, glass and other materials from regular trash. Unlike his opponent, Norris Poulson, he wasn’t going to force “Los Angeles housewives to perform coolie labor for a salvage firm.” Frustrated by his lack of mayoral power, “he threw up his hands,” says Steve Erie, a professor at the University of San Diego who has written extensively about L.A. politics.

Tom Bradley

[ 1973-1993 ]

Bradley’s first four years produced one solid accomplishment: He changed the face of L.A. city government by hiring minorities in larger numbers. “Even for historically neglected groups, especially African Americans, City Hall seemed friendly,” says Jaime A. Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs. “You felt like you could have an audience with [the mayor]. People called him Tom.”

Richard Riordan

[ 1993-2001 ]

Confronted with several L.A. County wildfires in 1993 and the Northridge earthquake the following year, Riordan spent his first term building the city’s capability to manage disaster. He established what later became known as Emergency Network Los Angeles, an information database that 750 community groups can tap to communicate in a crisis. Riordan also revamped the permit-application process for construction projects and partly succeeded in streamlining licensing procedures for businesses to attract investment.

James K. Hahn

[ 2001-present ]

Hahn led the successful campaign to defeat Valley secession in 2002 and created a $100-million trust fund for affordable housing, one of the largest in the nation. He also blocked a second term for Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, whose department had been forced into a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department after the Rampart scandal broke. Hahn appointed William J. Bratton to carry out the reforms mandated by the consent decree.

-- Swati Pandey