The Unsinkable Roz Wyman

I’m trying to get Roz Wyman to crack, to join the rest of us in our rant about a political system that has run amok.

* What about the Buddhist temple? I ask. And soft money and impeachment and independent counsels and PACs and the Lincoln Bedroom? I could keep going, but this isn’t making a dent. * What about Social Security, she counters. And what about Medicare? What about my senator--Dianne Feinstein? “Do you want a hero? Feinstein pushed through an assault weapons ban when it was going nowhere; she got the desert [protection] bill that will leave all of that land for my grandchildren. And the breast cancer stamp, for God’s sake. For the first time in history a U.S. postage stamp has gone for research. You don’t think I feel a little piece of being proud of that? I do . . . I do.”

Wyman has the voice of a performer and her hands--waving, chopping, pounding at the air--are part of the show. She’s been sitting back on the living room couch in her Bel-Air home. But now she’s moved to the edge of her seat, and when I glance down, she taps my knee for attention. She’s passionate, her friends confirm, and then they smile as if there must be a better word for a senior citizen who is pulling late nights at Feinstein’s campaign headquarters just as she did for Helen Gahagan Douglas in her race against Richard M. Nixon in 1950.

Actually, what Wyman’s passion needs is an adjective: boundless, perhaps, or bulletproof; maybe legendary. She made Los Angeles history nearly 50 years ago when, at 22, she became the first woman ever elected to the City Council. Then, pregnant with her first child, she led a cliffhanger vote in 1957 that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Chavez Ravine. “What this lady did for baseball in this city, they should erect a monument to her,” says Tommy Lasorda. That was back when there wasn’t even a women’s bathroom in the council chambers and official city meetings were regularly held over drinks at the Jonathan Club, which was off limits on two counts for a Jewish woman.

Surely, having invested so much of her life in public service, she should be outraged that politics these days seems to be money, money, money. So I try again. And I suggest a scenario aimed at her soft spot as an old-style, New Deal liberal. Doesn’t mental health suffer when it has to fight for attention against a Goliath like Big Oil?

“Sure mental health is going to have fewer advocates,” she shoots back. But she also warns that too many Americans sell their politicians short. “Well over the majority of them are there to serve,” she says. And, she insists, they will listen to mental health advocates because it’s the right thing to do. “You just don’t go into public life without wanting to serve. And most people don’t come out rich.”

The mental health vs. Big Oil scenario does resonate, though. Wyman has seen both sides--the powerful special interests and the grass-roots crusaders. She is a renowned fund-raiser who’s had more access to Democratic presidents than any oil company could hope for. Back in the ‘70s, she set a national record for the biggest cash haul at a single event. A grateful Democratic Party named her president of its 1984 national convention in San Francisco, the first woman ever put in charge of such an event. But when Wyman fights for a cause, it’s usually one that has “fewer advocates,” as she puts it. Judging by the 18 boards on which she serves, most of her battles are for the poor, the disabled, women and the arts.

“The system is not perfect,” Wyman concedes. “It is way off from being perfect. But at least 51% of the time it is right. . . . And [politicians], even the ones I work so hard against, are basically there to do a good job. If I lost that belief, whoa. That would really be horrible.”

*

ROSALIND WIENER WYMAN IS ONE OF THE LAST TRUE BELIEVERS. And after what she has seen--from the days when money was secret and newspapers were partisan, to the crackdown of the Watergate reforms and the gaping loopholes today--that is strong testimony.

This fall, a few weeks before Election Day, she’ll turn 70. And she still lives life just as she drives her white American-made sedan--pedal to the floor and grumbling about people in her way. “Come on, lady, have some guts, have some guts,” Wyman barks to a compact that’s attempting a rush-hour merge onto a busy street. Wyman has lived in four homes her entire life, all of them in West Los Angeles. She knows these streets well, and to avoid three minutes of stalled traffic, she will swerve onto side roads in search of a clear patch. Finally, on the way to her front-row Dodger seats, she blows past a warning sign: “No Stadium Access.” “I don’t sit still very well,” she explains.

Politics is like that, too. It’s exciting and glamorous as well as noble. It’s easy to see why people get involved. But it’s also the opposite of smoking--staying hooked is the hard part. Politics is a burnout business because it takes someone who combines high energy with the stamina to survive more low points than high ones. Many who step into it find their idealism evolves into realism and, then, cynicism.

What’s remarkable about Wyman is that she has a rookie’s motivation to roll up her sleeves and stuff envelopes or make phone calls at the same time that she has a veteran’s--even historian’s--savvy about campaigns at every level. She was already at the top of her game when Democrats held their convention in Los Angeles in 1960 and she was staging fund-raisers for John F. Kennedy that featured entertainment by Frank Sinatra. Today she’s still at it. She’s practically a full-time worker at Feinstein’s headquarters on Santa Monica Boulevard. She served on the Site Selection Committee that chose L.A. for this summer’s Democratic convention. And she’s still a figure who seamlessly spans Hollywood and politics. President Clinton spotted her at a fund-raiser she organized last June and told the gold-plated audience: “She reminds me of my ties to my roots. Her loyalty to our party and our candidates is something I hope I can emulate for the rest of my life.” Two days later, Warren Beatty--who says he “goes way back [with Wyman] to 1961? Or 62?”--pulled her aside in the owner’s skybox at Dodger Stadium for her take on whether Ralph Nader’s third-party presidential bid might hurt Al Gore’s chance of winning California in November.

“She’s a historic figure in Los Angeles,” explains Bill Wardlaw, an investor and power broker. “She has done things that are monumental for our city.”

Wyman is also a widow with three grown children who lives alone in the family’s seven-bedroom house. But there is nothing feeble about her. She can be blunt and outspoken, a trait some describe as arrogance. She can also be a micro-manager who is demanding of a young campaign staff at the same time she treats them with baseball tickets and home cooking. “No one has mixed feelings about Roz,” a friend once said. “They love her or they hate her. . . . To know her is to have an opinion about her.”

In her council days, Wyman’s political enemies were well known. She was so critical of Mayor Sam Yorty, a fellow Democrat, that a columnist wrote “their vendetta has replaced the La Brea Tar Pits as one of our major tourist attractions.” She also slapped a libel suit on Ed Edelman during the campaign in which he stymied her bid for a fourth council term in 1965. Today several of the hatchets are buried. Many have come to see that Wyman’s blunt talk does not mean it’s personal. It’s Roz.

*

THINGS ARE NOT GOING WELL AT THE FUNDRAISER at which Clinton will raise more than half a million dollars for Feinstein. The president is running late and a disagreement about the speaking order that’s been simmering for weeks is still not resolved. Wyman, of course, is not sitting still. She is in a brown pants suit with a chiffon blouse and a black Secret Service clearance pin. Her hand clutches a pen and a red folder. “This is crazy,” she finally mutters to no one. “Has anybody seen anybody?” A friend spies her and tries to interrupt for a quick hello. “I know you’re preoccupied . . . .” she begins. Wyman cuts her off. “I am.”

The 11 a.m. event is a Saturday brunch at Green Acres, the name for grocery magnate Ron Burkle’s estate in Beverly Hills, where Clinton spent the night. Wyman figures she and others made about 1,000 phone calls to get this crowd of about 240 guests. Each has paid either $1,000, $5,000 or $20,000 to attend, the latter group getting a more intimate reception with Clinton after the brunch. To anyone near middle income, this is an unfamiliar scene of elegant wealth. When guests arrive, they are directed to a pool at the far end of a medieval-style lawn and garden, where tuxedoed waiters are offering trays of orange juice, water and white wine. Brunch is served on the tennis court, which is covered by a white tent and carpeted with artificial turf. The epicurean buffet of chicken salad, scrambled eggs, French toast, sausage and fruit was catered by Spago.

Today is Feinstein’s birthday and Wyman is hoping the president will break with protocol and introduce the senator while a surprise cake is wheeled in. It’s the “touch of Roz,” says daughter Betty Wyman. At every event she orchestrates, there is something uniquely Wyman. She’ll serve hot dogs at a formal event or hire violinists to play at a casual gathering. At the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco, it was an indoor pyrotechnics display. Good thing Feinstein was the mayor. “She does not limit her hopes and dreams to what is possible at the moment,” says Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a close friend who worked on the 1984 convention.

This time, though, the White House isn’t going along with the touch of Roz. Presidents do not make introductions. So the first speaker is Gov. Gray Davis, followed by Feinstein, then Clinton and then the cake. Wyman is pacing off to the side near the Secret Service detail, hands in her pockets, then on her hips. She stops cold when Davis reveals the birthday and the audience begins to sing a confused and halting effort. “Not yet!” Wyman mutters, putting a palm to her forehead. Davis realizes the blunder immediately. He backs away from the microphone even as Clinton directs him to lead the song.

The cake idea is soon in serious jeopardy. Nobody is making their remarks brief. As Davis talks, Wyman tells an aide to get chairs for Clinton and Feinstein. When the senator is done, Wyman clenches a fist and pumps her arm. Halfway through Clinton’s speech, though, she talks to a Secret Service agent and wanders over to Feinstein campaign manager Kam Kuwata. “I just gave up the most beautiful birthday cake you’ve ever seen,” she says.

*

IN 1960, WHEN WYMAN ORGANIZED AN EVENT FOR KENNEDY AT the home of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, not everything went according to plan either. The response was huge, more guests than the house could hold, so Wyman approached the next-door neighbor with a request to occupy his house for the day. He was a Republican, but she was persuasive. Just one more thing, she asked. Could they knock down the wall separating the backyards? Kennedy’s union supporters would have it back up in a day, she promised. “It was a mind-boggling experience,” recalls Leigh, who performed at the event with her husband and Sinatra.

Wyman has spent much of her life just outside the flash of paparazzi cameras. She is just as familiar with Hollywood celebrity as she is with politics--and she has found a natural affinity between the two. Both take ambitious but grounded people who thrive in a spotlight and appeal to mass audiences while owing their survival to skittish popularity ratings. And both had common sanctuary at the Wyman home. In fact, the blurring of the line between politics and entertainment has roots on the Wyman living room floor, where Roz sent visiting youngsters such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Jerry Brown before they were old enough for a seat on the couch.

Their parents, Janet Leigh and Gov. Pat Brown, respectively, were among many well-known social guests of the Wymans. Roz married Eugene L. Wyman in 1954, and by the 1960s, the two were quite a power couple. She emerged as a leader in her third term on the City Council and won election by her colleagues to serve as president pro tem. He became chairman of the California Democratic Party, a leading national fund-raiser and the founder of a prominent law firm--Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman and Kuchel--that represented the entertainment industry’s elite, including stars such as Sinatra and Lucille Ball.

Back then, Sunday night dinner at the Wyman home was the place to be in Los Angeles. Washington politicians were known to reschedule flights so they could get a seat. And Hollywood was represented by producers, directors, actors and studio executives. Over the years, Wyman dinners saw Walter Mondale and Sinatra, Tip O’Neill and Jacques Cousteau, Hubert H. Humphrey and Cyd Charisse, Pierre Salinger and Warren Beatty, even Charlton Heston in his days as a Democrat. Dress was casual and the conversation was sometimes spirited.

“It was just fun,” says Leigh. “They liked people and they knew a lot of people. But it was like, ‘Come on over.’ ”

Most nights after dinner, guests moved into the living room to watch some of the first-run movies that Gene Wyman brought home from the office. He liked gangster films and “The Godfather” was a favorite. At the push of a button, a wood-panel section of the living room wall opened to reveal a fully equipped projection room.

By Bel-Air standards, the Wyman home is modest. By any other standard, it is grand. A blacktop driveway slopes up a rolling lawn and curls around an antique fountain filled with lilies. Shade trees and tall pines block the view of the two neighbors, a software magnate on one side and Georgia Frontiere, owner of the St. Louis Rams football team, on the other. The two-story house is an original design with a smooth white exterior and towering columns supporting a decorative cornice.

Wyman is at the same time proud and embarrassed by the house. First she explains its original design by the prominent Los Angeles architect Paul Williams and its history as a residence for Lauren Bacall after she left Humphrey Bogart. It has also seen historic events, including visits by all three of the Democratic presidents since Kennedy. Almost in the next breath, though, she is a critic. It was a fixer-upper that needed a lot of work when they bought it more than 40 years ago, she says. “You wouldn’t believe the deal we got.” They also had to buy somewhere in the area, she explains, so she could live in her council district. Still, the place looks expensive and she frets aloud that it makes her sound rich. Finally, unprompted, she volunteers that they bought it for $155,000.

Wyman was raised with those kind of working-class values. Oscar and Sarah Wiener were running a drugstore on 9th Street and Western Avenue when Rosalind was born in 1930. He was the pharmacist and she cooked meals at the soda fountain. When the hours became too long for him alone, Sarah Wiener went to night school and got a degree so she could be licensed. Eventually they opened a second drugstore.

Wyman, growing up with a brother 13 years older, takes much of her idealism and passion from her mother. Sarah Wiener volunteered at juvenile hall in Los Angeles, where a room is still named in her honor. She was also an avid baseball fan who maintained a childhood loyalty to the Chicago Cubs, the home team of her native city, where she grew up poor near the stockyards. When Roz was 2, her mother became precinct captain for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first reelection campaign. Roz Wyman remembers her father’s worry that running a partisan campaign out of the drugstore would cost them customers. But Sarah Weiner thought politics was a cause too important to ignore.

“My mother and dad felt that government took care of people,” Wyman says. “And they were good to people.”

Roz Wyman was widowed on Jan. 19, 1973. Gene Wyman was 47 and a physically fit jogger who, like his wife, never drank and had no history of poor health. Still, he suffered a fatal heart attack in the elevator at his office. More than 2,000 people attended the funeral, including dignitaries and celebrities. And at age 42, with a very public life and three children between 10 and 15, Roz Wyman was suddenly on her own.

She still reacts to the memory as if it were recent. She talks with wistful melancholy about their marriage and their first date, when she stood him up because she had dashed to the scene of a fatal car accident in her council district. But she can’t explain how she survived the following years. “Widows do crazy things,” she says. As in a divorce, some friends were lost, and it hurt. But there were many, like Mel Levine, a young attorney at her husband’s law firm and a future politician, who became surrogate family members, especially for the Wyman children.

“Of all of the remarkable things that Roz has done, none is more impressive than how she raised three spectacular kids with Gene having died in the sudden and totally unexpected way that he did,” Levine says. “They are all fabulous and each one is totally different.”

Like their mother, none of the Wyman children have moved from West Los Angeles. The oldest, Betty, now 42, has a doctorate in criminology that she uses to do drug-rehabilitation work. Robert, 40, is an attorney, and Brad, the youngest at 37, is a movie producer. The sole grandchild, Robert’s 9-year-old daughter, is a daily topic of interest for Roz.

When he died, Gene Wyman had been planning a major fund-raiser in Washington to benefit the Democratic Party’s upcoming congressional campaigns. The event was delayed by his funeral, but Roz Wyman soon agreed to take over her husband’s role. The memory is a blur today, she says, but she considered it a tribute to him. It also turned into a high water mark for the Democratic Party, drawing 2,500 guests and raising a near-record sum of more than $1 million. National press coverage of the event on May 23, 1973, which outdid a similar Republican dinner the previous week, called it an early sign that the unfolding Watergate scandal would dominate the next election.

*

ROZ WYMAN IS IN HER FAVORITE spot on the planet: her front-row seats at Dodger Stadium. It doesn’t feel like you’re watching a game from here; you are in it. When Lasorda would come to the railing at the home-plate corner of the dugout, he was closer to Wyman than most of the players on his bench. In these seats, you have to wonder whether to duck when there is a throw to third or whisper when a batter is in the on-deck circle.

“When this is full and everybody stands and sings the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ ” she says with a pause. “I just feel so proud. . . . My ballpark. It has been what I thought it would be and so much more.”

Back in 1957, Wyman thought a professional sports team was essential for a growing city that was working on its national reputation. When New York turned down Dodger owner Walter O’Malley’s request for help with fabled Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Wyman and fellow council member Edward R. Roybal paid a visit that seemed like a longshot. O’Malley actually refused their first meeting. But even after the idea caught on, it turned out that Los Angeles had some of the same concerns as New York. Why should taxpayers help with a sports franchise? Under the plan, the city would transfer its property in Chavez Ravine--for a price--to the Dodgers, who would build a privately funded baseball field. With Wyman as sponsor, the City Council passed the plan by one vote.

After the City Council’s narrow decision, a slim majority of voters ratified the plan. But the idea was so controversial that the pregnant Wyman was getting death threats. A groundswell of support also developed for the families, mostly Latino, who were relocated to make way for the stadium. Years later, the debate was still so emotional that it was a major--if not decisive--reason that Wyman lost her bid for a fourth term on the council.

“A lot of people like to stand up and take bows and say that they brought the Dodgers to Los Angeles, but Roz Wyman is the one who got the team here,” says Peter O’Malley, former president of the team.

A grateful Walter O’Malley gave Wyman the seats she now occupies. The field was still dirt when he took Wyman on a tour in 1961 and told her to pick any seats she wanted. Wyman chose eight, four on the aisle in a front row and four more right behind. As a council member who was under a microscope regarding the Dodgers, Wyman says she was scrupulous about not taking freebies. She bought the season tickets. But it’s hard to imagine O’Malley could have offered anything more cherished to such an avid baseball fan than access to the best seats.

Her husband’s law firm paid for the tickets and often used them for clients. After he died, Roz Wyman had to sue to get them back. In its court filing, the firm expressed “dismay [that a] woman of plaintiff’s background, breeding and character could attach so much significance to eight baseball tickets.”

Those lawyers did not know Roz Wyman. It’s not just baseball. Wyman has a deep pride in knowing that none of this would be here without her.

*

IN 1975, JUST AFTER SHE was widowed, Wyman tried to win her seat back. It is a decision that she can’t explain today other than to chalk it up to a foggy vision at the time. She started out as a favorite to win, but the race turned ugly when Wyman was attacked in the primary by rival Democrat Fran Savitch, a top aide to Mayor Tom Bradley who was running with his blessing. Wyman was portrayed as an out-of-touch imperialist, more impressed with her national endorsements than with local issues. When the primary votes were counted, Savitch came in first. The damage to Wyman was so great that she finished third, knocked out of the runoff by an unknown named Zev Yaroslovsky, now a Los Angeles County supervisor.

The loss ended Wyman’s interest in public office. And even now, she has erased the experience so thoroughly that some close friends don’t even know she was a candidate. Daughter Betty, who was 17 at the time, says, “You’ve brought back recollections I would never have thought of because I always remember her as such a force to be reckoned with that it’s hard for me to remember that she did lose.”

Even without regaining her public office, Wyman has been a role model for many of those who have. She was one of the first people contacted by Pelosi and former South Bay Congresswoman Jane Harman when they considered their own campaigns. “She is an enabler for so many of the rest of us to do things,” says Pelosi. “The confidence she had was something she projected onto others--you can do this.”

Wyman is also a soulmate to Feinstein, a frequent house guest who shares her age, profession, gender and religion, as well as tenacity. “I turn to her for advice,” Feinstein says. “We are very close friends. . . . There isn’t anything that we don’t talk about.”

Wyman has continued to help women trying to reach public office. It is a cause she once shared with the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, a powerful fund-raising organization for Democrats and women’s issues. The group disbanded about two years ago, however, angry at the same things in politics that have soured millions.

“We were so frustrated by the lack of campaign finance reform and the lack of willingness in every part of the political spectrum--Democrats as well as Republicans--to control this horrifying thing that has gone so far out of whack,” says Lorraine Sheinberg, a former board member of the group. So they quit.

But Wyman doesn’t get it. She shakes her head and sounds almost scolding. “Is it because you gave them money and that should make them do something?” she asks. “I disagree with that, totally. If it’s a good person who is there, you shouldn’t abandon them.”

The last true believer. Wyman came of age at a time when there were fewer focus groups and more visionaries. Politicians didn’t walk on as many eggshells as today’s incrementalists. The system wasn’t any cleaner than it is today and, if anything, the problems were more threatening. But now the public has a lower tolerance and higher expectations. The modern way is to quit when things don’t work. And that’s where Wyman is the last of a breed.

“She’s an idealist and she does it for the right reasons,” says Harman, who, as a young girl, remembers the day a woman was first elected to the City Council. “I don’t think she has lost any edge. The sad thing is, they don’t make them like that anymore.”