Road Trips

Confused by what the pundits mean when they talk about about the perks and power of incumbency? Spending Tuesday on the campaign trail with Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan would have proved instructive.

Strictly speaking, the four appearances on Riordan’s usually light “public” schedule had nothing to do with his reelection bid this spring; his City Hall press office billed them as “the latest of his ongoing days in the community.”

Yet from a visit to a popular family center next to the Mar Vista Gardens public housing project to a neighborhood business owners meeting in Venice, Riordan got to hone his stump skills in front of overwhelmingly friendly audiences.

“We’re all pulling for him here,” said Viola Bortz at the Westchester Senior Citizens Center after the mayor sounded his familiar themes of improved public safety, more jobs and revitalized neighborhoods.

It was a day made for photo ops and friendly exchanges. Aides did not even tell reporters about the workaday parts of the itinerary--the breakfast he hosted for area Congress members and his meeting with owners of a Westchester firm about its expansion plans--until they were over.

At the Westchester center, Riordan punctuated his talk with jokes, remembered to compliment a member on her recent award from a local business group and was careful to share credit for city accomplishments with Ruth Galanter, the popular council member who represents the area.

References to state Sen. Tom Hayden, the 1960s antiwar activist who is challenging the mayor in the April 8 primary, were rare but hostile. One man at the Westchester center, describing himself only as a “retired veteran,” rose to voice “concerns some of us have that a traitorous draft dodger might become mayor.”

But even the love fest at the senior citizens center gave hints of some of the controversies that will dog the mayor’s race.

One longtime resident and anti-airport expansion activist complained to a reporter that he had “been muzzled” and kept from the microphones.

“We didn’t get a chance to talk about it,” longtime Westchester resident Thomas Kery said about opposition to plans for a massive expansion of Los Angeles International Airport, which Riordan favors.

The last big LAX expansion “wiped out half this town. . . . It’s gonna happen again. You can’t put a 10-pound ham in a 1-pound sack,” Kery said as the mayor and his entourage whisked off to the next appointment.

At a meeting of Westchester business and civic leaders not far away in a new commercial block near the airport, Riordan steered the conversation to a favorite topic--public education.

“We have a dysfunctional school system” in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Riordan ventured to a group gathered at a new Starbucks to show off the new retail area and its memorial to the area’s aeronautical pioneers.

The wealthy businessman-attorney-turned-mayor mentioned the $20 million his family foundation has donated to schools for computers and other equipment and his role in founding LEARN, which seeks to give more authority to individual schools and make them accountable for student achievement.

In Venice, the mayor met with a group of merchants battling everything from visual blight to prostitution and drug dealing along a seedy strip of Lincoln Boulevard.

To a woman who complained that “you can’t even walk down the street without someone slowing down” and making a proposition, he suggested taking down the license number and calling police.

The city will help with all sorts of neighborhood problems, Riordan said, sounding another favorite theme, but “it’s up to all of you to make it happen.”

“Take responsibility, take power,” the mayor intoned.

What about the city-owned tree overdue for a trim, one exasperated store owner wanted to know.

“I’m not allowed to do it myself,” she complained.

Repeating a favorite line about how it is easier to get forgiveness than permission, the mayor suggested that “some night after dark. . . .”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but the appreciative giggles it drew showed he had made his point.