Worst of Times Brought Out the Best in Bradley

Elsewhere in the paper, you’ll read thoughtful and well-documented analyses of Mayor Tom Bradley’s 19-year reign.

Not here. I’ve been analyzing him since before he was mayor, and that’s enough. Instead, I’d rather write about something that gave me insight into the mayor’s personality and taught me about his strength of character.

It’s about my travels with Tom, Ali and Dee Dee.

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Tom, of course, is the mayor. Ali is Ali Webb, who was Bradley’s press secretary. Dee Dee is Dee Dee Myers, Webb’s assistant who later succeeded her. Dee Dee is now press secretary for Gov. Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate.

Press secretary to the mayor was the first big job for both women, then in their early 20s. Bradley was like their grandfather. Ali called him sir or Mr. Bradley.

But despite the generational differences, the mayor listened to their advice. They delivered it in a firm manner, walking directly into his office and telling him what they thought.

Our travels weren’t glamorous. I was never invited on the mayoral trips to Europe, Asia or the Middle East. I don’t think Ali or Dee Dee were either. On those junkets, the mayor didn’t want reporters around. Nor did he want the presence of employees whose job it was to talk to the press.

Mostly, I accompanied the mayor when he was chasing higher office, traveling the state trying to become Gov. Tom Bradley. The campaign I remember best was 1986 because it was so revealing of the essential Tom Bradley.

Although Bradley had come close to being elected governor in 1982, nobody gave him much chance of beating Gov. George Deukmejian four years later.

The campaign lived up to its gloomy promise. But there was one day that none of the traveling reporters will ever forget. It was when the mayor gave a speech about his African-American heritage.

Dealing with being black had troubled the mayor and his campaign advisers throughout the campaign, as it had in 1982. In that first election, Bradley handled the issue by ignoring it. As a result, his turnout in African-Amercian neighborhoods was low, a possible cause for his narrow defeat.

Besides being a mistake politically, the mayor also seemed personally uncomfortable with such an approach. He was, after all, African-American, and proud of it.

As the fall of 1986 settled in on California, the mayor came to terms with the issue in what we reporters called his “I Am Black” speech.

In strong, clear words, Bradley challenged Californians afflicted with racism to rise above their bigotry.

The audience, attending a Democratic meeting in the Central Valley, responded with some of the campaign’s loudest applause.

The trip ended at Lake Tahoe. That night, Bradley, the reporters, the press secretaries and others went to dinner. We had never seen the mayor celebrate before. He drank wine, traded jokes and insults with us and laughed all through dinner.

A bride and groom in an adjoining room in the restaurant invited Bradley to join the wedding party. He put his arms around the bride and groom and posed for wedding pictures. The wedding party--white men and women from Northern California--were clearly pleased and honored by his presence.

The rest of the campaign was dismal. But as inevitable defeat neared, I saw another side of Bradley, the strong captain who never forgets the needs of his shell-shocked troops.

On the last weekend, with the campaign too broke to hire a charter, Bradley flew up and down the state on commercial airliners.

There was no VIP treatment, no solicitous airline vice presidents hustling the mayor into special lounges. Bradley sat in the same packed waiting room with everyone else. In politics, nobody loves a loser, or even wants to be around him.

Bradley walked among the shattered staff, joking, keeping their spirits up, thanking them, saying have faith, there’d be another day.

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I also remember a short trip we took three years later when Bradley was running for a fifth term as mayor.

It was a bad day. The Bradley campaigners were angry, demanding a retraction over something in the paper they said was misleading. We didn’t think it warranted a retraction.

Dee Dee sat down next to me and said all they really wanted was a paragraph in my story the next morning clarifying the situation. “Would it hurt you to do that?” she asked. “No,” I said, it wouldn’t hurt. So I wrote the paragraph.

Today, with the mayor’s career entering a new phase, I just can hear Dee Dee saying, “Would it hurt to write something nice?”

No, Dee Dee, it wouldn’t hurt at all.