Gage Quits as Top Bradley Aide in Major Shake-Up

In a major City Hall shake-up, Deputy Mayor Mike Gage is leaving his position as Tom Bradley’s chief of staff and top political aide for a job with a developer, The Times has learned.

Gage’s departure, effective Dec. 1, will end a roller-coaster stint in the mayor’s office that spanned the best to the worst days of Bradley’s political career. He helped engineer Bradley’s political revitalization two years ago, only to be plunged into the center of an ongoing conflict-of-interest scandal.

The sudden move will trigger a significant retooling of Bradley’s staff at a time when the mayor is under continuing federal investigation and his political standing is at an all-time low.

City Hall sources said Gage, 44, will be replaced by Mark D. Fabiani, the mayor’s 32-year-old staff lawyer and speech writer, who only recently was looking to leave the troubled Bradley Administration for a private sector job himself.

Bradley is scheduled to announce Gage’s departure and Fabiani’s appointment at a press conference today, the sources said.

The mayor is also expected to disclose the retirement of Deputy Mayor Grace Davis, a longtime Bradley liaison to the Latino community who has been at odds with Gage. Davis will be replaced by Diane M. Pasillas, executive director of the Latin Business Assn. and a recent Bradley appointee to the Board of Airport Commissioners, sources said.

Gage said his departure after 2 1/2 years in the mayor’s office was both voluntary and friendly. He said he believes that he was leaving behind a “a staff that is stronger than the one that was here when I arrived.”

Gage said he chose to speak in advance of today’s announcement in the hope that his departure would not be portrayed as detrimental to the mayor.

“I love Tom Bradley,” Gage said in an interview. “I watched him at a time that would have sunk smaller men--and he held his head high.”

A former assemblyman from Napa and an outdoor adventurer, Gage will become president and chief executive officer of the San Fernando Valley home-building company of Theodore Stein, one of the most aggressive pro-development members of the Los Angeles Planning Commission.

By leaving now, Gage may avoid pending ethics reforms submitted Monday that seek to bar ex-city officials from appearing before local agencies for a period of one year.

But Gage said the proposed ethics limits would not be an issue because Stein, as a member of the Planning Commission, already falls under the city’s conflict-of-interest code. Any project involving Stein’s company automatically is sent to a group of council members acting as the Board of Referred Powers, Gage said.

“He is the only guy in the city I can work for and not create a conflict of interest,” Gage added. “I am not going to be lobbying for him either, not in my life. . . . I can live under the ethics code for the rest of my life, and it will not affect me.”

Stein, who has served for 15 months on the Planning Commission and is its vice president, said he hired Gage to manage his firm’s day-to-day operations.

“He was not hired in any way, shape or form because of any contacts he has with the city of Los Angeles,” Stein said.

Too Tempting Offer

In recent weeks, Gage has repeatedly denied to his staff and reporters that he was job-hunting or had any intention of leaving. But, he said in the interview, one published report of his denials brought an offer from Stein earlier this month that was too tempting to pass up.

Fabiani will move up in the mayor’s office at a time when associates report that he had expressed reservations about the lingering investigation of the mayor and how it could possibly hurt his own career. But one source in the mayor’s office said that whatever doubts may have existed did not prevent Fabiani from taking an even more visible and challenging position.

Recently, Gage has had a stormy relationship with some members of the mayor’s staff and the media as he tried to keep together an office that suffered from the fallout of investigations of Bradley’s personal finances and his conduct in office.

A large, rough-hewn man, Gage has had a reputation over the years as easy-going and garrulous. But as scandal enveloped the Bradley Administration, he grew bitter and combative. Gage even took the extreme step of withholding news releases from the now-defunct Herald Examiner for what he perceived as the newspaper’s unfair coverage of the mayor, sources said.

Bradley is under investigation by a federal grand jury for his business ties with eight banks, savings and loan associations and brokerage firms. Among the areas under scrutiny in the wide-ranging probe are possible insider stock trading and violations of federal law specifically aimed at political corruption.

The federal probe is broader than the recently concluded investigation by the city attorney’s office, which found insufficient evidence to prosecute Bradley on conflict-of-interest charges. In his report, City Atty. James K. Hahn sharply criticized Bradley’s indifference to ethical concerns and filed a civil lawsuit against the mayor over errors and omissions in his financial disclosure forms.

In the past, Gage has frequently skipped from job to job but without the controversy that surrounded his tenure at City Hall. In addition to his two terms as a member of the Legislature, Gage was a top strategist in the 1980 presidential campaign of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and managed the 1982 campaign of Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and Bradley’s 1985 reelection.

After a stint with Beverly Hills investor Albert Gersten, Gage joined Bradley at City Hall in 1987. He is credited with almost immediately injecting new energy into the mayor’s office and with helping scare off major Bradley opponents in April’s mayoral election.

Gage’s new boss, Stein, has an estimated $30 million in annual sales of luxury homes and commercial buildings. Stein said he considers himself a centrist on the Planning Commission.

But homeowner activists contend quite the opposite.

“A lot of people are complaining about him,” said Mary Ann Geyer, president of the La Tuna Community Awareness Assn. “I am hearing it constantly. They say that Ted Stein is taking a very pro-development stand on their cases.”

Times staff writers Nancy Hill-Holtzman and Dean Murphy contributed to this story.