NEWS ANALYSIS : Mayor Endured by Ability to Mold Consensus

Tom Bradley’s victory in 1973 offered a ray of hope in a gloomy time. Against a backdrop of Vietnam, Watergate and Watts, he was backed by a financially and racially diverse coalition of people who hoped his election would be an antidote to the bitterness and fractiousness of the times.

And, for the longest time, it was.

Now, nearly 20 years later, the end of an era is at hand. From the downtown skyline to the rubble of South-Central, from the steel foundations of a new rail system to the cardboard hovels of the homeless outside City Hall, a long and complicated legacy awaits the judgment of history.

While Bradley’s biracial governing coalition succeeded in holding the city together for many years, Los Angeles once again finds itself torn by ethnic hostilities. The turn of events raises an important question for historians: Did the violence of last spring make a mockery of what is perhaps Bradley’s greatest claim--that he was able to unite the residents of the nation’s most ethnically varied city?

“I think history will treat him very, very well,” said Steven Erie, a UC San Diego political science professor who is writing a book about government in Los Angeles. “As the city’s longest-serving mayor, he fundamentally transformed the face of the city.

“He was the one that brought racial harmony after the Watts riot, even though it fell apart in the last year. He put together an absolutely unprecedented biracial coalition that lasted for years.”

In time, his accomplishments with brick and mortar--expanding the city’s harbor and airport, transforming a moribund downtown into an international trade center and laying the foundation for a commuter rail network--put him squarely in the ranks of the century’s city-builders, with men like the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.

But it was Bradley’s gift for consensus-building that secured his power and, for many years, gave the city a sense of political fair play.

Yet Erie, like many observers of local government, believes that Bradley stayed on too long, and his praise for the mayor is tempered by disappointment with the city’s leadership, in general, during the past several years.

“Bradley failed to sense the dry rot underneath the ‘80s facade of prosperity,” Erie said. “He wasn’t alone. The city was restructuring into a dual society and the city’s leadership did not deal with the social and economic tensions that were attendant to that restructuring.”

For many observers, the golden age of Tom Bradley ended with the 1984 Olympics. For others, the decline began with his second losing race for governor two years later. Clearly, the mid-1980s were a time when events were mostly beyond the city’s control, such as the effects of Proposition 13, the Reagan Administration’s radical reduction in federal funds for cities, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the massive influx of poor immigrants. These circumstances tested the limit of city government’s resourcefulness.

“L.A. had to cope with being the Ellis Island of the ‘80s just as Reaganomics was hitting full stride,” said labor leader Jim Wood, the longtime head of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and a Bradley loyalist.

Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, argues that Bradley belonged to a generation that, by the mid-’80s, was ill-equipped to deal with contemporary social pressures. Bradley, Guerra said, is a throwback to the era when politicians could solve problems from the top down--by administering massive doses of government money or appointing civilian generalissimos like Peter Ueberroth to rebuild the inner city.

“It was a generational problem,” Guerra said. “Bradley was a captive of old policies.”

Harry Pachon, professor of politics at the Claremont Colleges, expressed a similar view.

“For all his diplomatic skills, I think that the mayor ultimately lost touch with the rapidly changing demographics of L.A. He carried the mind-set of the 1960s and ‘70s into the ‘80s and ‘90s, when L.A. was a very different place.”

The year Bradley was first elected mayor does seem like another age.

American troops were fighting their way out of Vietnam. The Watergate scandal was unfolding. It was the year of Roe vs. Wade, the case in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a woman’s right to abortion. America was on the verge of an energy crisis. and gas lines were forming. The movie “The Godfather” won the Academy Award for best picture. Baseball’s designated hitter rule took effect. Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in tennis’s battle of the sexes.

Los Angeles, with 500,000 fewer people than now and only three buildings 50 stories or taller, was a long way from dubbing itself the capital of the Pacific Rim.

Bradley won in a city where only about 13% of the population was black. He overcame a campaign that traded heavily in racial rhetoric. Moreover, in defeating incumbent Mayor Sam Yorty, his election took the mayor’s office out of the hands of a downtown business Establishment that had traditionally dominated local elections.

Planning Commissioner Suzy Neiman, one of the mayor’s earliest appointments, recalled why, for her, Bradley was such a breath of fresh air.

“He stood for an openness in government we had not had before. He showed a great respect for citizen participation and, as a result, there was a tremendous amount of participation by all kinds of people you weren’t accustomed to seeing around City Hall.”

During his first two months in office, Bradley virtually doubled the number of blacks, Asians and women serving on city commissions.

Bradley’s formal authority was sharply limited by the City Charter; his power grew out of his unique ability to mold alliances from the ranks of the city’s ethnic minorities, business and labor leaders, Democrats and Republicans, Westsiders and Valleyites.

“Mayor Bradley succeeded because people trusted him and felt in the end he always did his best for the city. By sheer force of his personality, he was able to overwhelm weaknesses of the City Charter,” Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said.

Not one for the bully pulpit, Bradley got things done quietly, whether it was persuading the Reagan Administration in the midst of wholesale cutbacks to help pay for the city’s Metro Rail project or enlisting the city’s business Establishment to underwrite the Olympics, which became a financial success.

Bradley’s authority derives from a personal style that appears both conciliatory and commanding. A man who seems uncomfortable in crowds, who shies away from open confrontation, he possesses a magnetism that even his closest aides have trouble understanding.

“Tom is the only person I know who could be boring and charismatic at the same time,” said one.

Yet some critics argue that Bradley’s style became counterproductive.

“Ultimately, his was a style of leadership that didn’t resonate in the black community, especially in the streets,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate at the Claremont Graduate School’s Center for Politics and Policy.

He is best at forging a consensus behind closed doors, not so good at winning over a crowd on a street corner.

“Tom works well with leaders, with the head of the Chamber of Commerce or the Urban League,” said one longtime ally who asked to remain anonymous. “But when it comes to dealing with (angry activists), he isn’t any better than the rest of us. He is more comfortable with reasonable people and not comfortable with screamers. . . . He may be the son of a sharecropper, but he is a pretty middle-class guy.”

A common criticism of Bradley is that once he became politically secure in Los Angeles and began turning his ambitions toward the governor’s office, the Bradley coalition became top-heavy with real estate developers and other well-fixed Establishment types. The drawbridge to the inner city was raised, Guerra and others contend.

“Once he was secure in the mayor’s job,” said Guerra, “the coalition changed, became dominated more and more by people concerned with big business and the redevelopment of downtown.”

Among the mayor’s harshest critics are black activists who contend that during the ‘80s the Bradley Administration began to ignore complaints of police abuse of minorities. The bitterness over police-minority relations festered for years before the mayhem erupted last spring after the not guilty verdicts were returned in the case of police officers charged in the beating of Rodney G. King.

Byran Jackson, an African-American professor of political science at Cal State L.A., makes the case that Bradley had turned his back on the inner city in favor of building a white electoral base that could win him the governor’s office.

“Bradley probably ought to be remembered as a great mayor,” Jackson said. “By the same token his omissions belong on the front burner of history. He has done a very poor job at addressing the needs of poor in the city.”

The mayor’s toughest tests have come at the end of his long tenure. The trouble began with charges of financial impropriety, including his accepting a paid directorship at a bank that did business with the city.

Later, a feud erupted with the City Council over Bradley’s attempt to remove former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after the King beating. Then came the riots and charges that he reacted irresponsibly by publicly condemning the verdicts in the King trial. Most damaging, perhaps, was his admission in the wake of the Police Department’s disorganized response to the riots that he had not communicated with the chief in more than a year.

All of this left him weakened enough that friends and supporters were urging him not to run.

“His power has weakened,” said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. “It’s weakened because the city has less money, because there are different power groupings that don’t all listen to mayor and perhaps will not listen to any mayor.”

But Kwoh, like many others, argued that the mayor’s record will shine through the tarnish of the past few years.

“It’s been a remarkable period. He has kept an electoral coalition together and he has accomplished some amazing things.

“Sure, there have been failures,” Kwoh said. “But I wish I could be as positive about the future as I am when I think about the past 20 years.”

The Bradley Years Mayor Tom Bradley, the son of Texas sharecroppers, overcame the barriers of poverty and racism to become the city’s first elected black councilman and mayor. Before his political career, he was a high school athlete, a track star at UCLA and a police officer, rising to the rank of lieutenant. 1963: Wins City Council seat. 1969: Loses mayoral race to incumbent Sam Yorty. 1973: Wins mayor’s race, beating Yorty with 56.3% of the vote.

Forms an Economic Advisory Council, made up of downtown business people, labor and government officials and community leaders. Puts in motion a major downtown building boom through the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. 1975: Appoints the first Commission on the Status of Women, helping to double the number of blacks, Asians and women serving on city commissions. 1977: Wins reelection for a second term with 59.4% of the vote. 1978: Development of the $500-million harbor project gets under way, transforming port into a major hub of international trade. 1981: Receives 64% of the vote for a third term. 1982: Loses race for California governor by less than 1 percentage point. 1983: Construction begins on the rebuilding of the Hyperion sewage plant in what would become one of Bradley’s largest capital projects. 1984: Leads effort to bring the Olympic Games to Los Angeles. They were lauded as a financial and civic success and considered one of Bradley’s biggest achievements.

Shakes up City Hall by calling for resignations of approximately 160 city commissioners. His new appointments continue his pattern of naming women and minorities. 1985: Wins reelection for a fourth term with 68% of the vote.

Becomes embroiled in environmental controversy when he drops his opposition to Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s bid to drill for oil along the coastal bluffs of Pacific Palisades. 1986: Loses second race for governor.

The massive Metro Rail construction gets under way eight years after passage of Bradley-backed Proposition 5, which provides a portion of gasoline taxes for rail transit construction. 1988: With critics accusing Bradley of neglecting the inner city, he doubles the amount of money the city spends on low-income housing.

Announces L.A.’s BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow), an after-school education and child-care program, which expanded to 19 schools. 1989: Over the next three years, Bradley and some of his associates are involved in more than a dozen investigations and ethics controversies, beginning with Bradley’s acceptance of an $18,000 fee for serving as an adviser to two banks doing business with the city.

Bradley narrowly wins his fifth and last election with 51.9% of the vote. 1990: A key component of the mayor’s planned commuter rail network, the 22-mile Los Angeles-Long Beach light rail system known as the Blue Line, begins service.

Faced with a fourth consecutive year of drought, Bradley imposes water rationing and pushes through a water conservation ordinance. 1991: Justice Department concludes its probe of alleged insider trading and political corruption without bringing charges against Bradley.

Appoints Warren G. Christopher, a former deputy secretary of state, to head a panel of community leaders to investigate the Police Department in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating.

Unsuccessfully attempts to suspend Chief Daryl F. Gates. His action sets off a bitter quarrel with City Council members.

In the aftermath of the King beating, the mayor launches a long and stormy process of reforming the Los Angeles Police Department’s internal disciplinary procedures.

Bradley’s office attempts to reduce tensions between black activists and Korean merchants after a judge’s decision not to imprison Soon Ja Du, a Korean-born merchant convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of black teen-ager Latasha Harlins. 1992: Bradley endorses Proposition F, a successful ballot measure giving the mayor and City Council new authority over the police chief, increasing the power of the Police Commission and reforming police disciplinary procedures.

Not guilty verdicts returned for police officers accused in the King beating touch off the worst rioting in the city’s history. The night the rioting breaks out, Bradley appeals for calm; later he is accused of provoking violence by denouncing the verdicts.

Bradley asks Peter Ueberroth to head Rebuild L.A.

Compiled by Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen