Hail and Farewell to Two Giants of Progressive Leadership : Power: Tom Bradley and Bill Robertson changed this city by putting people first, empowering them, giving them pride in L.A.

Tom Bradley, mayor, and Bill Robertson, labor leader, are retiring. They depart arm-in-arm, much as they strode across Los Angeles’ public landscape for two decades. Together, these two men have been the backbone of nearly every one of the city’s progressive causes.

Bradley and Robertson came from very different places: the labor leader from Minnesota was a boxer and a bartender; the mayor from Texas was a track athlete and a cop. But at their cores, they are really very much alike.

No one who ever worked with them can doubt their fierce and abiding loyalty. People will tell you how, during many a firefight over the years, it was always reassuring to look over and see Bradley and Robertson in the same foxhole. Nor can anyone who ever crossed swords with Robertson and Bradley question their fierce commitment to principle and their overwhelming desire to win.

I have seen both these men at work. Sometimes it was during the flush of a hard-fought victory, such as when Daryl Gates was ousted or when the Christopher Commission reforms were approved. At other times, it was during the most withering attacks by political opponents and the media. Through it all, Robertson and Bradley never wavered.

There were moments, I know, when their hearts were broken when others did not return the loyalty, or show the uncompromising commitment to principle that was so vital to the souls of Bradley and Robertson. But the signs of such deep disappointment were always fleeting because their desire to fight the next battle always took over.

Tom Bradley and Bill Robertson always thought big, and they accomplished feats that will seem especially staggering once Los Angeles has its fill of lesser leaders. They decided that Los Angeles ought to have a modern mass-transit system, and they created jobs for thousands and a foundation for our 21st-Century economy. They decided that Los Angeles ought to support the rights of workers to decent pay and health benefits, and they threw their weight behind those who clean our offices, work in our restaurants and hotels and dig our graves. Bradley and Robertson decided that Los Angeles ought to host the Olympics, persuaded the Raiders to move south and renovate the Coliseum, and won the right to host the World Cup.

And Bradley and Robertson did not hesitate to swim against the tide. They resisted the shortsighted “no-growth” movement, which in many ways led to the anti-business atmosphere now plaguing Los Angeles. And they stood tall to say that the LAPD must be reformed, and that Gates must go, when it was not politically fashionable to do so.

There were rough spots, to be sure. Neither Robertson nor Bradley was especially well-suited to the 30-second sound-bite era. One was perhaps too gruff, the other too taciturn. And there were times when their footing became uncertain as the political ground shifted--shifts that are not infrequent when you lead for as long as Bradley and Robertson did. And they struggled with poverty and racism.

But through it all, Bradley and Robertson stayed at the the forefront of the progressive movement.

Some say that the recent mayoral election was a defeat for Los Angeles progressivism. And that may seem so. But already the mantle of progressive leadership has been seized by people such as Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and labor leader Maria Elena Durazo. And the mantle is within the grasp of others, such as Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, if only they would reach for it. But most of all, progressives can take heart from this basic fact: Tom Bradley and Bill Robertson have changed Los Angeles so fundamentally that it will be impossible for anyone to return to the dark days of Sam Yorty and the Committee of 25, when all of City Hall was but one hue.

There is the memorable moment in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” when lawyer Atticus Finch has just lost his heroic defense of a black man unjustly accused. As Finch prepares to leave the courtroom, the black man’s supporters in the balcony rise, and a minister there tells Finch’s daughter, “Stand up, your father’s passing.”

Each of us who has worked with Tom Bradley and Bill Robertson ought to be standing now. I know that we will each mark their passage from public life in our own way. And that is only right, because Los Angeles is unlikely to see their likes again.