Los Angeles Deserves a Superstar Mayor

My plan was to go easy on the candidates for the mayor of Los Angeles in the early going. With the finish line seven weeks away, I figured there was plenty of time to get out the club.

But then I went to Thursday night’s debate at Temple Beth Am in West L.A.

“I don’t feel like the city would be in bad hands with any of them,” said Fran Grossman, who liked state Sen. Richard Alarcon and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa in the debate, while her husband, Joel, gave a thumbs up to Mayor Jim Hahn.

Fran Grossman’s line is perfect: We wouldn’t be in bad hands.

But can’t we do better than that?

As Rabbi Neal Scheindlin said, this is Los Angeles, the second-biggest city in America.

“And I feel like I barely know Jim Hahn,” he said as his 15-year-old son, Micah, the family’s political scientist, nodded in agreement.

Let me help, then, by filling in some blanks on Slim Jim Hahn and the others.

In the last runoff we had Hahn, who was pretending he was black, running against Villaraigosa, who was pretending he was white.

It’s more complicated this time, partly because of an ongoing corruption probe swirling around City Hall.

Hahn is the good son still trying to honor his late and revered politician father, but as my pals at the barber shop suggest, somebody should check Jim’s DNA.

Villaraigosa is still trying to figure out how a Latino with crossover appeal can lose an election in L.A.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, driven by a sense of justice and destiny, is out to nail Hahn for dumping him as police chief. If Parks wins, his first move may be to try and reappoint himself chief.

Alarcon said at the debate that from the age of 15, his mission in life was to end poverty in California.

And former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, who wants to break up the school district, issue a commuters’ bill of rights and be everybody’s friend, is running for mayor because he’s running out of things to do.

Sitting in the audience Thursday, I was struck by how frequently the candidates had similar answers to questions on homelessness, economic development, traffic and crime. Despite some spirited sniping, they were fairly collegial, with lots of winking and back-slapping.

That’s all very nice, but as a Los Angeles resident, I don’t want same-sounding answers and collegiality. Nor do I want piecemeal approaches to intractable horrors like the cycle of violence in lost neighborhoods.

We’ve got a shortage of safe havens and activities for kids, and every night, we lock down schools that have gymnasiums and libraries.

We’ve got more useless retail giants than we’ll ever need, and all we build are new mega-stores that pay lousy wages in a city where the middle class is on life support.

We’ve got the best weather in the world, and we’re all sitting alone in our cars on streets with no bike lanes.

Is this Los Angeles? Or Phoenix?

I want grand, world-class ideas that match the wonder of the most dynamic city in the country.

The city of Paris, cramped by economic stagnation, traffic congestion, housing shortages and physical decay, has a mayor who told Newsweek: “I want the city to take full responsibility for its history.... I also want it to be daring, and to fully belong to the 21st century.”

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe had the chutzpah to break the sacred building-height limit in hopes of drawing more corporations to new office space. While we tinker with left-turn lanes, he’s building a major tramway and promoting bicycling. There’s now a wildly popular beach on the Seine, a new university and plans for new technology and biotech centers.

While we celebrate the Grove in L.A. as a wondrous achievement, Paris is remaking a dilapidated commercial and transit center, with proposals for hanging gardens and art venues along with shops. Delanoe generated so much excitement over the project, 180,000 Parisians viewed models for the new center.

In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley was quick enough on his feet to steal Boeing from Seattle.

In Philadelphia, ex-Mayor Ed Rendell recaptured the youth of an entire city when he put on a bathing suit at a municipal pool, waddled to the edge of the diving board like a flabby polar bear and executed a cannonball to mark the official start of summer.

When pools opened in L.A., I think they issued a press release.

Spoiled, sprawling, stratified Los Angeles needs a cheerleader and a scold.

It needs someone who photographs well, can stir the metropolis from its slumber, charm Sacramento rather than grovel before it and court wayward CEOs.

I’m not sure such a shining star was in the constellation I saw Thursday night, but each candidate seemed to have at least a vague notion of the calling, whether he was up to the challenge or not.

Huggy Bear Hertzberg said the mayor’s job is to take risks and, “Wake up, every day, and make this place electric.”

Los Angeles doesn’t need a mayor who runs the city, it needs a mayor who is the city.

Who’ll pay attention otherwise?

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.