Office Politics

To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.

--James Baldwin from Joan Didion’s “The White Album”

*

The fury seldom seems to leave Omar Bradley. Sometimes, it is there in his eyes; other times, in how he moves. Most often, it comes out in his voice. Sharp. Scolding.

One moment, the 38-year-old mayor of Compton is calm, almost gentle. The next, angry and unforgiving.

In the five years since he first won public office, his outbursts have become a trademark. When he ran for mayor in 1993, his opponent claimed that he warned her, “Someone may die in this campaign.” The night he was elected, he lunged at her campaign manager, ordering him “to get out of town.” After a few months in office, he blamed Jews for destroying the image of African Americans through rap videos.

And just over a year ago, the longtime high school teacher and football coach created another uproar by defending a player--his nephew--for punching a referee who allegedly used a racial epithet. The allegation, state school investigators said, was unfounded.

Ask Bradley to name his political heroes and he will tick off a list that runs from John F. Kennedy to Malcolm X. Ask him why he is so often full of anger and he invokes another name.

“I try to pattern myself after another great leader and that is Jesus Christ,” he says.

Just as Jesus wielded the jawbone of an ass to drive money-changers from the temple, Bradley says, he sees nothing wrong with lashing out against those he believes are wrong.

“Righteous indignation,” he calls it.

If his style rattles others, it has not stopped Bradley’s political ascent. In short order, he has gone from schoolteacher to city official poised--after an unsuccessful run for Congress--to seek his second term as mayor.

“He has the potential to one day be president . . . if he can just get it under control,” says one of his fiercest critics, Compton activist Lorraine Cervantes.

Bradley puts it another way: “If I was white, I’d be a legend.”

Some say that in America, we judge our politicians by two sets of standards. When black politicians are passionate, they run the risk of being called militant. When they are eloquent, they can be labeled slick. And when they topple in the political or personal scandals that can take down any public official, their fall seems the more precipitous. Because their numbers are so few. Because the hope that they will deliver is so high.

So how do we judge Bradley?

True, he is impassioned, but many believe he has split Compton apart with his actions and his rhetoric. And even as he claims the moral high ground, questions about his character are relentless.

Three years ago, a cocktail waitress claimed that Bradley, the married father of two, also fathered her twin sons--a charge that became an issue in the mayor’s race but was later proved untrue by a blood test.

In 1995’s extortion trial of Rep. Walter Tucker III, the Compton congressman and former mayor claimed Bradley pushed a casino project because he was promised cash and partial ownership by its promoters. And while authorities have never brought charges against Bradley, law enforcement sources say his activities have raised ethical questions.

Lies and smears, Bradley responds. The rantings of those out to destroy him because they fear him. Those are Bradley’s answers. And they may be enough to keep his political career on track.

But if past is prologue, Bradley’s political future will be one of triumphs tainted by controversy.

As Bradley told supporters when he was elected mayor: “People say we are mean, we are quick-tempered and we’re fighters. And they are absolutely correct.”

*

Some will tell you flat out that Omar Bradley is a liar. He will tell you they are lying.

Critics will say he is a bully. His response is that they want to deny him power.

And when others call him racially divisive, he’ll suggest they are bigots.

“You know, it’s amazing,” Bradley says, smiling. “[Critics] really cannot say anything bad about me because I have never done anything bad.”

Whether that is true is open to dispute. But what cannot be denied is that Bradley is never one to shrink from battle. And to be fair, how could he be? For if there is one city where the meek shall inherit nothing, it is Compton.

Trying to survive in the long shadow of Los Angeles, the city of 97,000 has struggled financially for decades. Racial tensions have simmered for years as Compton moves from predominantly black to Latino. And no city around, certainly none the size of Compton, has a more volatile political scene.

Enter Bradley.

In 1991, after two unsuccessful bids for city office, Bradley was elected councilman, defeating businessman Pedro Pallan, the first Compton Latino to make a runoff for council.

“Compton is coming back,” Bradley said, promising to bring the city more jobs and revenues.

Some of what he pledged has come true.

The city’s economy, though hardly booming, seems to be moving forward with new federal and state grants for businesses and housing. A new multimillion-dollar hotel and casino have opened at the site of the city’s failed hotel. And Bradley has embodied Compton’s welcoming attitude toward new business, aggressively courting companies to open in Compton. Indeed, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm twice ranked Compton among the best places in the country to start and grow a company.

And in a city where crime can seem ever present, Bradley has enacted a ban on cheap handguns and developed more sports programs to divert youths from the streets.

But if Bradley has met some of his goals, he has not managed to turn Compton around, partly because the problems are intractable, partly because of his combative style.

The city’s per capita murder rate is still three times greater than in Los Angeles. Its unemployment stood at 14.8% for the first six months of 1995, compared to 7.6% countywide. Median household income is some $10,000 a year below the county average of about $36,000.

And Compton’s political scene is as much a circus as ever.

“Compton is crazy,” observes one longtime political consultant active in minority affairs. “Compton is Compton.”

Compton’s troubles did not begin with Bradley, of course, and are unlikely to end with the efforts of any one man. But the mayor’s words and actions have done little to calm things.

For years, critics say, Bradley has fostered the street-tough image he has rebuked in rap videos. “[When] he first ran for mayor . . . he scared everybody to death because he was running around and raising his chest as if he was ready to fight,” recalls Cervantes, who worked on Bradley’s campaign.

Bradley scoffs at the gangster description. But he relishes the notion he is no one to tangle with.

“A lot of it is me,” says Bradley, a powerfully built man with a 50-inch chest and 20-inch biceps. “I don’t shirk from people who threaten me. I would say, ‘If you are gonna do something to me, let’s get it on right now.’ ”

During the heated 1993 mayoral campaign, Bradley’s mercurial side surfaced several times.

Opponent Patricia Moore says he told her, “Someone may die in this campaign.” Bradley says that his words were taken out of context and that he was referring to clashes and threats that marked that race.

Then on election night, shortly after he was declared the winner, Bradley confronted Moore’s campaign manager, Basil Kimbrew, whom Bradley had accused of firing several shots at his house--a shooting Kimbrew denied and Compton police could never substantiate even occurred.

“You shot at my house,” Bradley shouted, lunging at Kimbrew before being restrained.

To this day, Bradley insists a shooting occurred no matter what police concluded.

*

Just as Bradley’s tempests have raised questions about his ability to lead, his private life and closed-door dealings have raised some to challenge his character.

In the trial of Tucker, Bradley’s name surfaced several times in conversations between Tucker and an FBI informant who secretly recorded the discussions.

“I cannot afford to leave the leadership and the authority [of Compton] to somebody like a Bradley who’s . . . like a tyrant, who’s like a, a maniac,” Tucker said in one conversation with the FBI informant, later referring to Bradley as “an Idi Amin.”

Tucker also told the informant that he believed Bradley was promised cash and part ownership of a casino proposed before the one now open in the city. “They’d give him some cash and there’s more coming and there’s ownership coming. . . ,” Tucker said.

Apart from denying the accusation, Bradley does not respond to Tucker’s testimony.

“I don’t even want to begin to go there . . . because I’m beginning to get mad and I don’t want to get mad,” Bradley says.

With Tucker’s trial over, rumors persist that authorities have investigated Bradley for everything from federal violations to bookmaking. (The speculation about bookmaking arises because an older brother of Bradley’s pleaded no contest to the crime in 1994 and was described in court documents as a well-known bookmaker in South-Central Los Angeles.)

The rumors are ludicrous, he says, claiming that federal authorities already have examined his financial records and found nothing improper.

When accusations of personal improprieties do not hound Bradley, his political decisions can.

His move to stop the carnage in Compton by banning cheap handguns has angered some residents who do not trust the city to protect them. His support for the casino has alienated some who fear gambling will bring the city more trouble as sure as it brings it more revenues. And he led the push to make the mayor and council full-time positions--a move that would have raised his $32,000 annual salary to $80,000 if voters had not killed the idea.

Then there was Bradley’s 1993 vote to appoint his successor.

In the mayor’s race, Bradley won support of many Latino voters by promising to appoint a Latino to succeed him as a council member, the city’s first. But on the night he was to make good on his promise, a night when his 1991 council opponent, Pedro Pallan, showed up with his family to accept the presumed appointment, Bradley joined two other council members to name an African American to his seat.

Then and now, Bradley has insisted he did not have the votes to appoint Pallan. But Cervantes and others have never bought that explanation.

“He claims he could not control the other [two votes]. Now, he controlled them. But let’s assume he didn’t. He could have withheld his vote and held up [the appointment],” Cervantes says. “That would have shown some integrity.”

“He lied to them,” agrees a prominent black official. “He cut the deal and we could have lived with it. . . . But for him to break it, whatever bridge we could have made [with Compton’s Latinos] was broken by Omar Bradley.”

*

Similarly, Bradley’s 1993 remarks about rap videos angered many in the Jewish community.

Protesting rap’s gangster image of Compton, Bradley scolded rapper Eazy-E. The rapper, whose real name was Eric Wright, sought the city’s permission to film a video in Compton. But during a council meeting, Bradley upbraided the rapper, telling him he was being exploited by people of a “specific ethnic group” who were ruining the image of blacks while “having a bar mitzvah at the same time.”

Bradley later issued two apologies for his comments.

To this day, what Bradley intended and how far he went are seen by many as proof that he cannot always curb his anger before it undermines his position.

“Sometimes,” says Councilwoman Marcine Shaw, “the head says things the heart don’t mean.”

Shaw, who has known Bradley since he played Pop Warner football, attributes his fury largely to the fighting spirit of his parents, both community activists.

“The fact [is] his parents fought so hard in this community [and] naturally a lot of this rubbed off on him. So almost all his life he has been fighting for the people,” says Shaw. “So I would say, sure, there are times when the things he says would not come out the way longtime established people would like. But that is what we would do when we were his age.”

The way Bradley sees it, people either understand him or don’t.

“My father is Irish . . . my father’s father was an Irishman named Doc Bradley. My father’s mother was a [Blackfoot] Indian,” he says. “I am a product of a million things. And none of those things did I have control over. I didn’t say while I was in my mother’s womb, ‘Move to Compton. Send me to Centennial.’ ”

It is at Compton Centennial High School, his alma mater, where Bradley encountered another controversy.

In October 1995, during a football game with Beverly Hills High School, one of Bradley’s players struck a white referee whom the player said called him “a nigger.”

After an inquiry, the California Interscholastic Federation concluded there no proof the epithet was used. It also said Bradley inflamed an already volatile situation with his actions.

“Omar Bradley, the coach of Centennial, was totally out of control. . . ,” one African American official claimed in the report, which included similar accounts from other officials.

The report was a cover-up, Bradley says, and as preposterous as the claims that he acted improperly.

“If I was going out there accusing people of racism . . . if I am the villain that they accuse me of being, then why didn’t I run over there and finish the job on [the official]?” Bradley says. “Why did I grab [the player], chastise him, strip him of his uniform, send him off the field, go to my team, gather them together, tell them that they have got to control their conduct no matter what [they’re] called?”

Some say Bradley is doing better these days at controlling his anger. But Bradley himself acknowledges it has often been his undoing.

When told his supporters and critics alike share one observation about him, Bradley finishes the sentence. “I don’t know when to shut up,” he says.

*

While one black political consultant says Bradley’s tirades are the “rantings of a publicity-starved elected official,” others contend he is saying what voters--at least some--want someone to say.

And Bradley would have it no other way.

“You gotta understand something. I grew up in Compton,” he says. “I didn’t grow up where I could duck a fight or I could check out of a school and go somewhere else. . . . And I am not gonna change so people will feel more comfortable with me.

“In this world, tough guys make it and weak guys don’t.”

So let others call him what they will, Bradley says. He will put up with the talk and all the rest.

“Because,” he says, “I am the best mayor this city has ever had.”

* Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Robert Lopez and Jim Newton.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

OMAR BRADLEY

Claim to fame: Mayor of Compton.

Age: 38.

Family: Married for 16 years to his high school sweetheart, Robin; two children.

Passions: Politics, teaching, athletics.

On his reputation: “Omar Bradley is no longer an individual. He is a more of a concept.”

On those who criticize his style: “The very things that people say are wrong with me are the reasons I am still here.”