Slim Jim Enjoys His Life After Politics

It’s a tale of two mayors. On Tuesday, I had lunch with Jim Hahn in Chinatown and then got back to my desk just in time for a call from the man who ran him out of office, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Hahn talked about being relaxed enough to enjoy the city for the first time in more than two decades. Villaraigosa talked about trying to solve the housing crisis and remake skid row. It’s a tossup as to who’s having more fun.

Hahn is a new man altogether, even if he still has no better judgment than to dine with me. He’s tanned, he’s relaxed.

He’s even funny.

While the two of us worked on the slippery shrimp at Yang Chow, he told me about his new life setting up real estate investments for the pension funds of building trade unions. Another diner came up and shook his hand, telling Hahn he looked great.

“Everybody says that,” Hahn responded. “I must really have looked terrible.”

One of the great things about being an ex-mayor, he said, is that everyone you meet claims to have been a fan.

“Everyone voted for me,” he said. “I think I should demand a recount.”

I wanted to poke a bit, maybe see what Hahn thinks of the job his successor is doing. Villaraigosa, I noted, has already ramrodded a deal giving him partial control of the schools, and he’d probably take over the state Department of Motor Vehicles and NASA if anyone would let him.

But Hahn wouldn’t bite. His own legacy, he said, includes beating back secession and bringing in Bill Bratton to remake the LAPD. If Antonio wants to make his mark with the schools, he said, then so be it.

Hahn told me there’s more to life for him now than politics, a line of work he didn’t choose so much as inherit as the son of a legendary county supervisor.

“Last year, my first year of freedom, I made it to the [Hollywood] Bowl four times,” Hahn said at Yang Chow, where they’ve still got a photo of him on the wall.

First year of freedom?

“Yes. I’m enjoying life again, which is nice.”

He spends much more time with his son and daughter, and, for anyone who recalls my attempts to liven up Hahn’s last campaign by finding him a date, it turns out he didn’t need my help. He said he’s happily involved with a woman he began dating more than a year ago.

In his new life, there’s only one big headache.

“It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to work this morning,” Hahn said of his commute from San Pedro to his office in Brentwood.

“You should have attended more MTA meetings” as mayor, I told Hahn, reminding him that he didn’t exactly set the world on fire with his transit record.

But if a long commute is all he’s got to complain about, that’s a pretty light load. Villaraigosa, meanwhile, has to worry about the happiness and welfare of nearly 4 million people, several thousand potholes, the shortage of affordable housing and the worst skid row in the United States.

It was the latter two items Villaraigosa was calling me about Tuesday, and oddly he sounded just as happy as Hahn.

He crowed about the $129-million deal he’d just cut -- using federal housing funds along with city and county money -- to finance homes that include rehab and support services for more than 2,000 people now living in shelters and temporary housing. He said he and L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina worked to make sure that families now living on skid row will get priority, but he couldn’t say exactly when it will happen or where they’ll go.

It’s encouraging, I told the mayor, if only a start, given the decades of neglect.

We also chatted about the compromise in which skid row encampments will be illegal by day, but OK at night until beds are available for those now sleeping on the streets. The mayor and I both know skid row has bigger problems to worry about than tents. But it’s a fair compromise, he said, since businesspeople would like to see the campers banned altogether and homeless advocates want them helped rather than arrested.

With all these headaches, I wondered if Villaraigosa might begrudge Slim Jim his stroll down easy street. But when I told him I’d had lunch with Hahn, the mayor said he was glad to hear his ex-foe was cruising along.

“Good for him,” he said.

I told him about Hahn’s new job, and how his goal is to have the unions sink money into local projects that would provide jobs for their members. The idea is to build near transit lines to ease traffic and cut down on smog.

Villaraigosa liked the sound of it.

I’d suggest that the two of them hook up, except that Villaraigosa is in his element and Hahn is in his, and both are probably where they belong. In fact, I told Hahn over lunch that there might have been two winners the night he lost to Villaraigosa.

“I know,” he said. “I just didn’t know it at the time.”

After laying out the details of the real estate investments he’s trying to put together, Hahn cracked open his cookie and read the fortune.

“Golden investment opportunities are arising.”

Hahn smiled like a man on a roll.

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com.