Hahn Switches Gears for Runoff in Mayoral Race

Riding on five terms in city office and his father’s legacy, City Atty. James K. Hahn spent much of the mayoral campaign buoyed by the perception that his victory was inevitable--only to finish second in the balloting to former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.

Now Hahn is retooling his approach for the June 5 runoff election, trying to give voters a better sense of who he is even as he signals his intention to challenge Villaraigosa in tough terms.

The aftermath of the April 10 election makes clear why Hahn advisors and others see that pivot as an essential move by the city attorney. Though he was once the front-runner, Hahn’s support barely budged through the campaign, and he was overtaken in the final weeks by Villaraigosa, who finished with 30% of the vote, compared to 25% who cast ballots for Hahn.

Even more alarming for Hahn, voters seemed to know precious little about what he stood for. A Times exit poll found that just 8% of his supporters cited the city attorney’s stance on issues as one of the qualities they liked most about him.

“The results of the primary exploded the myth that Hahn is the inevitable winner,” said Santa Monica-based campaign consultant Bill Zimmerman, who has run mayoral campaigns in Chicago and New York City.

Determined to turn his numbers around, Hahn has adopted a pronounced shift in tone, one that began in the final weeks of the campaign’s first round and that is expected to reverberate through the coming six weeks. Though he once seemed content to rest on his laurels of 20 years in public office, Hahn has entered the second phase of the race already jabbing at his rival.

During his first postelection news conference, he challenged the former assemblyman’s vote against an anti-gang law Hahn helped write. Since then, his advisors have indicated that Hahn will come down hard on Villaraigosa’s actions during his tenure in Sacramento, specifically criticizing his records on crime and energy.

On Wednesday, Hahn said his top priority in the next six weeks will be to help voters distinguish between the two men.

“I want to keep this as positive as we can, but I’m not going to allow somebody to be mistaken about who we are and what we stand for,” he said after a march down Pico Boulevard with Jewish leaders to commemorate the Holocaust. “I think it will be a very clear choice.”

Hahn’s tough rhetoric is a marked contrast to the more cordial tone he adopted earlier in the race, when he focused on his experience in city government and frequently invoked the memory of his father, the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Early on, Hahn’s team of advisors exuded confidence that his widespread name recognition and family history in Los Angeles politics would keep him ahead of the pack. For most of the race, Hahn ran almost as an incumbent, presenting himself as a safe choice and a caretaker for Los Angeles, someone who knows how the gears of government fit together.

“Now is not the time for on-the-job training,” he said often.

Hahn’s television ads, which also featured photographs of his late father, never mentioned his opponents. Rather, they suggested that his victory would be the natural order of things: “City Controller Jim Hahn. City Attorney Jim Hahn. Jim Hahn for Mayor.”

“Hahn’s campaign was, ‘I am the city attorney, and I have a name that’s worth gold bullion,’ ” said consultant Harvey Englander, who ran Ted Stein’s unsuccessful race against Hahn in 1997.

Sensing now that he must go beyond that, Hahn said this week that he is ready to shed some of his privacy to give people a better sense of who he is, both as a person and as a city leader. Campaign veterans endorse that approach, but warn that Hahn’s challenge is a significant one, because it involves fleshing out a portrait in a relatively short time.

“I think people do want to know who you are,” Hahn said Wednesday. “I want to tell people who I am, apart from the job positions that I’ve held, what it is about public service that I like, what my own personal experience has been like.”

At a news conference after the election, Hahn talked about what inspired him to go into public service--a subject on which he has offered only vague insights in the past.

Hahn said he decided to run for office when, as a college student, he volunteered at Legal Aid’s Family Law Clinic and helped abused women get restraining orders against their spouses and boyfriends.

“After that experience, I decided I wanted to continue to change people’s lives for the better,” Hahn said. “I believe that public service is a way to improve the quality of life for people.”

In addition, Hahn is attempting to emphasize the specifics of his platform, talking about issues such as after-school programs, police reform and traffic that he wants to tackle as mayor.

But most of the campaign’s energy seems to be directed at keeping up a steady drumbeat of criticism of Villaraigosa, a strategy that experts said could help Hahn separate the two Democrats.

“He may not be inevitable anymore, but he’s got a name that people know, and there’s a sense that he’s a safe choice,” said USC political science professor Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign. “When you’re the safe choice, you make the other guy the risky choice.”

During his election night victory party at the downtown Westin Bonaventure hotel, Hahn said character would be an issue in the rest of the campaign “because people want to be able to trust the person in a leadership position.”

Aides to Villaraigosa picked up on that reference, and braced for the criticism it implied. It was not long coming.

The next morning, Hahn questioned why Villaraigosa voted against extending the California Street Terrorism Act, a law that Hahn helped write that increased penalties for gang-related crime.

Hahn’s advisors said they will continue to hammer at the former Assembly speaker’s record on criminal justice issues, and will try to pin responsibility on Villaraigosa for the energy crisis.

The focus on energy shows how significantly Hahn has shifted his message. In February, he told a Times reporter that he did not think the power shortage would be an issue in the mayor’s race.

The new tactic may succeed in putting Villaraigosa on the defensive. Within hours of victory on election night, the former speaker was forced to field questions about his record on crime.

“I voted on 12,000 bills,” he said. “You’ll be able to find a few of them you disagree with. So be it.”

But that response may not be sufficient. Campaign consultants said Villaraigosa has to figure out how to quickly neutralize the criticism of his record without getting off the subject of his vision for the city.

“If there’s legislation that taints him too far to the left, he needs to be prepared with a specific response, but he needs to jump from a specific response to a broader discussion about the city’s future,” said Dan Schnur, a GOP consultant who was a top aide to Sen. John McCain during his presidential bid.

Over the next few weeks, Villaraigosa seems bound to be confronted with more questions.

Kam Kuwata, a consultant for Hahn, noted that during the last mayoral debate at UCLA on April 4, Villaraigosa asked to be judged on “an unparalleled six years of public service.”

“If he’s inviting us to look at his sterling record, we accept the invitation,” Kuwata said. “Stay tuned.”