Bratton pitches utility tax

Seeking to capitalize on his popularity, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has embraced a starring role in a high-stakes campaign to persuade voters to preserve a utility tax this week that would bolster the city’s flagging revenues.

Bratton’s effort reflects his growing influence as a city power-broker, overshadowing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- at least on this issue. Campaign officials strategized that Bratton’s star power was more appealing to voters, across party lines, than that of the mayor or any city official.

If the referendum to amend and extend a current telephone utility tax doesn’t pass, city leaders fear that legal challenges could wipe out that revenue and deprive the city of about $270 million from already depleted coffers. A simple majority is needed to approve the measure.

Bratton, with his reputation as a no-nonsense cop who has overseen dramatic drops in crime since coming to Los Angeles six years ago, was the obvious choice to carry the message, political strategists said.

“From a strategic point of view, in addition to being the most credible person to talk about the potential impact of this, Bratton tells it like is,” said political consultant Steve Barkan, who is running the campaign in support of the measure, Proposition S. “He’s a straight-talker, and people respond to that.”

For his part, Bratton has moved easily into the role. He has used flare-ups in violence to highlight the need for Proposition S. At a news conference Friday to announce arrests in a spate of recent gang shootings in South L.A., Bratton, speaking off the cuff, said that additional officers had been sent to the area to stem escalating tensions. Then, without missing a beat, he made his pitch.

“A defeat,” he said, referring to the referendum, “would seriously mitigate the ability to do what we’ve done this past week . . . . The actions of the past week are a re-enforcement of one of the critical needs we have, which are resources to work with.”

Before the Proposition S campaign, Bratton had frequently spoken out about sensitive or high-profile issues related to policing in Los Angeles; for example, joining the effort two years ago to rein in California’s three-strikes sentencing law and recently pressing the City Council to back off its review of a controversial department policy.

But rarely, if ever, has he put himself so squarely in the public eye to lobby for something since taking the top law enforcement job in the city in 2002.

And, he understands the stakes. As police chief in Boston in the 1980s, he was the face of an unsuccessful campaign to defeat a tax proposition, which forced him to lay off a quarter of his force and close half of the city’s police stations.

This time around, Bratton says he is confident the measure will pass. Although there is no serious organized opposition to Proposition S, conservative talk radio hosts and anti-tax advocates have come out harshly against it. Bratton, however, said he was not worried that he risks damage to his reputation if it is defeated.

“I’m fighting the good fight. If we lose the fight, I don’t think it’s diminishing to my personal or professional stature,” he said. “I am not a politician.”

Politician or not, Bratton is hardly a political neophyte. In his time in L.A., he has deftly navigated the vicious political waters in and around City Hall -- sensing, with a few missteps, when to play nice with elected officials and when it was to his benefit to lash out against them. At the debate between Democratic presidential candidates in Los Angeles last week, he sat in the front row next to Villaraigosa. And he acknowledged in a recent profile in Playboy magazine that he is rumored to be in the running for a top position in the FBI or Department of Homeland Security if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) wins.

From the outset, Barkan framed the debate around Proposition S as one in which public safety was at stake. The story line was simple: If the measure, which accounts for about 6% of the city’s general fund, does not pass, significant cuts to city services -- including to the police and fire departments -- probably would follow.

Polling, City Hall officials said, indicated that voters responded most strongly when that message came from Bratton and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Fire Chief Douglas Barry, who is new to his job and less well known than the police chief.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn said campaign consultants typically conduct polls to identify the best person to carry the message to voters.

“People trust the police officers and firefighters,” said Hahn, who has not been involved in the campaign. “Chief Bratton has a lot of credibility right now with people in Los Angeles.

“Sometimes politicians aren’t trusted when they try to communicate a message,” she said.

Campaign officials, who raised just over $3 million, have only recently begun to run sparingly a television commercial featuring the mayor. A TV spot with Barry has been more useful, but, knowing that the police chief got more bang for the buck, campaign organizers have run an ad with Bratton far more frequently, Barkan said. On mailers, Bratton was featured on fliers sent to both Democrats and Republicans.

Bratton’s prominence in the campaign comes at a time when Villaraigosa’s political influence has suffered as a result of a highly public marital affair.

Villaraigosa’s willingness to use Bratton’s star power in the Proposition S campaign contrasts sharply with Bratton’s relationship with his boss in New York City, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani is widely known to have grown increasingly bitter toward Bratton as the police chief received credit for plummeting crime rates, eventually pushing him out of the job.

“Indeed, one of the things that Giuliani was criticized for . . . was that he didn’t do what [Villaraigosa is] doing,” Bratton said. “Which is use this resource, which in this case is my good reputation and my recognition factor.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com