Blames Hayden for Her Defeat : For Russell, the Day After Is All Business

For the loser, the day after is never easy.

It is tougher still when you are Los Angeles City Council President Pat Russell. She was only the second woman ever elected to the council, had won nationwide praise for her work and had begun to think after 17 years on the council that she would make a darn good mayor.

Out along the coast, where Russell has lived since the ‘50s, the voters canceled that dream Tuesday before she got the chance to succeed her friend, Tom Bradley.

But Russell chose to carry on Wednesday as if nothing was changed, as if her past supporters had not rejected her for someone newer and fresher. She came to the council chambers in City Hall, chatted with reporters for five minutes, then mounted the podium and gave the order--”Call the roll”--that has convened almost every council meeting for the last four years.

She was subdued, but there were no tears and no public tributes from friends, only whispered asides to reporters about Russell and her loss to Venice planning consultant Ruth Galanter.

“You’ve heard the saying, ‘The king is gone, long live the king.’ In this case, the queen is gone, long live the queen,” said Councilman John Ferraro, a friend who has served on the council with Russell since 1970. “I’m sorry to see Pat Russell gone.”

Blames Hayden, Activists

Before the meeting, Russell laid the blame for her defeat at the feet of Westside Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and liberal activists in Venice, accusing them of a concerted two-year campaign to turn voters against her.

“The wheels were put in motion after the last (1985) election,” Russell said. “It really aimed at underming my reputation. . . . It put out a perception that isn’t true.”

After the primary, Russell came out swinging with attacks designed to tie Galanter and her supporters to Hayden and other liberals. The left-bashing strategy dismayed some Russell backers, who remembered her as a liberal champion who consistently voted for environmental protection, gay rights and comparable pay for women. Russell herself had endorsed Hayden in his past elections.

“He’s been working on Santa Monica, and now he’s trying to move south into Los Angeles,” she said Wednesday of Hayden, with some bitterness.

Russell also said the near-fatal knife attack that kept Galanter confined to a hospital for much of the campaign ended up helping the challenger. It shielded Galanter from debates on the issues that would have revealed her to be “very narrowly focused” on the issue of overdevelopment, Russell said.

But development nonetheless became the focus of the campaign, despite efforts by Russell and her advisers to deflect the voters to other issues. The 6th District has some of the worst traffic in the city, and its beach-loving residents are especially sensitive to such quality-of-life concerns.

Voters Felt Betrayed

Tuesday’s results left no doubt that voters felt betrayed by Russell, who was elected in 1969 as a champion of the neighborhood groups that turned against her this time. As she evolved into a major force in city politics, critics said, she changed her liberal stripes and tried to weaken rent control, became a supporter of oil drilling along the coast in Pacific Palisades and turned into a predictable friend in City Hall for real estate developers. Last year Russell also was the most vocal opponent of a ballot measure to limit high-rise building that proved extremely popular with voters.

She argued all along that she favored the kind of measured, but steady growth that the city’s professional planners thought best. She was particularly proud of a plan she came up with to charge developers a fee for street improvements.

But it was not careful growth that the voters wanted--just less traffic and fewer high-rise buildings. And the plan did nothing to slow the pace of new development.

Galanter hit away at Russell’s new image as a crony of the developers. After six weeks of concerted campaigning for the runoff, Russell could not add even a sliver Tuesday to the 42% share of the vote she captured in the April primary.

Unlike some of her colleagues, Russell has never let her life be consumed with political ambition. She is also press-shy, a trait that drove aides to distraction, and she became so enmeshed in the unglamorous details of government that she was chosen in 1982 as president of the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

A housewife and activist before her election, she lives modestly in Westchester with a daughter, one of her three grown children, and enjoys pursuits not typical of a City Council member. She runs marathons, used to soak in flotation tanks and attend est seminars, and likes to climb mountains.

As she walked away from reporters Wednesday, she said she wasn’t sure what the next year would bring. But it seemed sure to include some time tending herbs in the backyard.

“I’m going to garden and climb some mountains I haven’t climbed.”