Hahn Portrays Rival as Waffler

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn’s reelection strategy came into sharper focus Tuesday as he sought to spotlight what he says are inconsistencies in the record of his challenger, Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa.

In a tactic reminiscent of President Bush’s efforts last year to stoke doubts about his opponent, John F. Kerry, Hahn said Tuesday that voters want “straight answers” from their leaders.

“I don’t think they need bobbing and weaving,” Hahn told reporters at his campaign headquarters. “I think they need somebody who will level with them.”

The day after they clashed over personal integrity in the first debate of the runoff contest, Hahn lobbed the latest in a series of charges that his rival is duplicitous: He accused Villaraigosa of taking contradictory stands on gang injunctions.

As Hahn tries to tear down Villaraigosa, an open question is whether his credibility with voters is undercut by the criminal investigation of the mayor’s fundraising and city contracting.

On Tuesday, Villaraigosa tried to keep the campaign’s focus on the investigation. “There’s a sense of pervasive wrongdoing,” he said.

Hahn’s drumbeat of attacks since Friday has illuminated his approach to regaining public support after he won less than a quarter of the vote in the election three weeks ago.

Hahn’s apparent aim is to portray Villaraigosa’s record as so rife with inconsistencies -- above all on public safety -- that he would be a worse choice than Hahn.

“The weather vane and the flip-flop are a standard way of raising the question: How much do you really know about this person?” said Samuel Popkin, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “It reminds people they don’t know very much.”

Still, Villaraigosa is better known to Los Angeles voters than he was when he lost the 2001 mayoral runoff to Hahn.

Villaraigosa emerged from the election three weeks ago with an extraordinarily high favorable rating of 71% in a Times exit poll, underscoring Hahn’s challenge in tarnishing his opponent’s image. The poll found just 48% viewed Hahn favorably.

Since then, Villaraigosa, who finished first in the March 8 vote, has picked up influential endorsements from the county Democratic Party and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

Hahn opened his offensive Friday by accusing Villaraigosa of telling a San Fernando Valley crowd during the 2001 race that then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks was not “the right person for the job,” then telling a South L.A. crowd two months later that he was “committed to working with him.”

He also cited Villaraigosa’s pledge during his 2003 run for City Council to serve his full four-year term and not run for mayor this year.

In the testy debate Monday in Northridge, Hahn reprised those arguments. Villaraigosa, in turn, took swipes at Hahn over the corruption investigations into his administration.

“The key here is this: Jim Hahn can’t talk about his own record,” Villaraigosa said Tuesday at a Boyle Heights appearance with city police to announce a $25,000 reward for help in capturing a hit-and-run driver. “It’s a record mired in scandal -- a record, frankly, of very little in the way of accomplishments. And so, what he seeks to do is to demonize my candidacy.”

Villaraigosa strategist David Doak called Hahn’s assault “an attempt to muddy the waters.” “I think he understands that his trust and integrity are very much in question,” he said.

Hahn reinforced his attack Tuesday by going after Villaraigosa on gang injunctions, which the mayor pursued when he was city attorney. The injunctions restrict gang members in certain areas from such behavior as congregating in public or carrying cellphones or pagers.

On Monday, Hahn proposed the first citywide injunction against gang members -- a move that drew a mixed reaction from experts.

Villaraigosa responded Tuesday by promising to take a look at Hahn’s proposal. “I support gang injunctions,” he said.

An hour later, Hahn recalled that Villaraigosa was a “named plaintiff” in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to overturn a municipal law in San Fernando that barred gang members from a park. Villaraigosa was then vice president of the Southern California affiliate of the ACLU.

“The district attorney wanted to bring a gang injunction to keep gang members out of that park so that families could use that park,” Hahn said. “Mr. Villaraigosa took the side of the gang members, said that they should be able to be in the park.”

“When he was president of the ACLU,” Hahn continued, “the ACLU was opposed to an injunction that I filed a few miles from there, on Blythe Street, to try to clean up that area.”

Villaraigosa was a board member of the ACLU’s Southern California chapter from 1988 to 2002 and president in 1993.

When Hahn was told Tuesday that Villaraigosa said he would look into the feasibility of a citywide gang injunction, Hahn said: “Well, I’m glad he’s changed his mind, because he used to be against injunctions. He didn’t think that they were a real solution to crime.”

Villaraigosa strategist Parke Skelton said the candidate had viewed the city’s early gang injunctions as too broad and too vague to respect constitutional rights, but now sees them as playing a useful role in fighting crime. In the 2001 election, Villaraigosa said he supported gang injunctions “in a very limited sense” and stressed prevention efforts.

Villaraigosa campaign manager Ace Smith said that the fight against gangs required more officers on the street and noted that Hahn had failed to keep his campaign promise to expand the city police force by 1,000 officers.

“For him to go out and demagogue an issue that he has failed on is just the height of hypocrisy,” Smith said. As for Hahn’s charge that Villaraigosa “took the side of gang members,” Smith responded: “That’s a lie, and he knows it.”

Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican campaign strategist, said Hahn’s addition of the gang issue to his attack on Villaraigosa’s trustworthiness could help the mayor with key voting blocs viewed as up for grabs: white Republicans and conservatives.

“It reminds a lot of people that Antonio was active in the ACLU,” which tags him as a “card-carrying liberal,” Hoffenblum said.

On another matter Tuesday, Villaraigosa highlighted the mayor’s shift in attitude toward debates, accusing Hahn of inconsistency. In a statement listing 12 candidate debates that Hahn skipped in January and February, the campaign said the mayor “committed the ultimate act of chutzpah” by demanding that Villaraigosa agree to eight or nine debates.

“In the race for president of the United States, they had three debates,” Villaraigosa said in Boyle Heights. “It seems to me that that might be a good number to choose.”

Hahn said his four main opponents had joined forces in attacking him in earlier debates, so Villaraigosa “kind of snuck by, tiptoeing around the edges,” and now the two rivals should show voters “what we stand for.”

“Nobody was really able to focus on him,” Hahn said. “I think that you’ve got to have more than a charming smile to be a leader, and I think that he thinks the smile alone will get him elected.”

Times staff writers Jessica Garrison and Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.