A future for L.A.? - April 20, 1993 mayoral primary leaves Republican Richard Riordan the leading candidate for the June 8, 1993 Los Angeles, California runoff election

National Review, May 24, 1993 by Harold Johnson

I PULL into a 7-Eleven off Sunset Boulevard and am greeted by an unexpected serenade. A loud-speaker over the entrance is blaring the Firing Line theme, the vigorous cadences of a Brandenburg Concerto.

"Yeah, we've got classical music going full time," the burly, T-shirted cashier explains. "Keeps the panhandlers away. Works like a charm."

The quickening pace of decay in the nation's second largest city--a crime wave that won't quit, schools that don't teach, legions of street people who act as human toll booths along sidewalks--has Angelenos improvising defenses, though not many as successful as the 7-Eleven's recipe for carving out vagrant-free zones.

What could turn out to be an historic reaction to L.A.'s protracted crisis came on April 20, in the first round of voting for a successor to Major Tom Bradley, who after twenty years is cleaning out his underused office. The race is officially non-partisan, but in this heavily Democratic city, no registered Republican has been elected chief executive for well over a generation. But on April 20, Republican Richard Riordan led the 24-candidate field by a long stride.

Top Democrats are nervous. The California Democratic Party moved quickly to endorse Riordan's opponent in the June 8 runoff, liberal City Councilman Mike Woo. The White House is reportedly thinking about following suit, though "it's not clear that open support from Clinton would be a bonus at this point," as L.A. political consultant Harvey Englander puts it.

Richard Riordan is an unlikely revolutionary. A 62-year-old attorney, he made himself a multi-millionaire through canny investing; he has never held elective office, but he has long been a player in the city's power elites. Although he aided the 1986 drive to oust Chief Justice Rose Bird, and this year sponsored a term-limit measure for city officials, his pedigree is by no means hard-right. The self-described "Eisenhower Republican" has showered dollars on candidates of both parties: indeed, he was one of Tom Bradley's biggest contributor. He says he's pro-choice, but gave $10,000 to Americans United for Life. Go figure.

Yet from the beginning in this race, Riordan has defined himself against the status quo. He is certainly a great advertisement for the L.A.-based Reason Foundation, champion of entrepreneurial answers to government woes. He cites Reason studies to make the case for contracting-out garbage collection and street maintenance, and for leasing L.A. International Airport to a private operator. He also talks about empowerment--pruning regulations, curbing taxes, establishing incentives for inner-city job creation.

Education is a top voter concern, and cuts Riordan's way. Though he isn't sold on vouchers, he is a critic of sagging standards and of empire-building in the sprawling L.A. Unified system, which he wants to divide into a host of small, independent districts.

In a town whose thin blue line is thinner, per capita, than most--James Q. Wilson calls L.A. "the most underpoliced city in America"--Riordan would hire 1,000 additional officers. And he would pay for beefed-up patrols not by hiking taxes (Woo's preference), but by putting government on a diet, trimming staffs and closing or merging redundant agencies.

Before the April vote, some liberal pundits were portraying the Riordan candidacy as sequel to Falling Down, a vehicle for resentful whites in the GOP enclaves of the San Fernando Valley. The actual vote left those analysts red-faced and grim. He did indeed romp in the Valley. But he also went to town on the Westside, picking up large numbers of moderate Democratic whites, many of them Jewish homeowners. Among Hispanics he scored a respectable 20 per cent--second place. And his pollsters say his 21 per cent of the Asian vote included a large share in Korean neighborhoods still on edge following last year's riots. Overall, Riordan captured 33 per cent, to Woo's 24 per cent. In a Democratic city, he still has to be counted the underdog, but the arithmetic gives him a solid chance.

One of the many things Riordan has going for him in the runoff is his opponent. Mike Woo, 41, is the weakest of the major Democratic candidates, a left-liberal with a fan club among big labor, gay leaders, and the Westside Brie nibblers who frequent ACLU fund-raisers. His chances of eating into Riordan's GOP base are nil; in fact, it will be a struggle even to secure the bulk of the moderate Democrats who voted for more centrist candidates in the primary.

Woo is the son of a prosperous (and politically conservative) Chinatown banker. He comes across as a mix of wonkishness and smugness, sort of a cross between George Stephanopoulos and Dr. Spock. He is known for his unctuous sermonettes on urban planning, police brutality.

Woo won prominence through his leadership in the effort to give former Police Chief Daryl Gates the boot, and he has a history of opposing special police funding requests (he voted against foot patrols and community-based policing, for instance). His prescription for law and order includes an outright ban on cheap handguns, at a time when more and more law-abiding citizens have concluded they need guns for protection (even actor Edward James Olmos, a prominent voice for calm in the city after the riots, has applied for a concealed-weapons permit, apparently after being threatened by gang members).