Old Wounds May Inflame Campaigns in Mayor’s Race

It’s a tangled web of onetime alliances, betrayals and broken relationships. It’s the Los Angeles mayor’s race.

Mayor James K. Hahn faces a field of candidates whose political and personal lives have been intertwined for years, so much so that one campaign consultant boasted that his candidate knows his opponent “better than he knows himself.”

There’s the former police chief, Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who worked with Hahn for years until the newly elected mayor pushed him out.

There’s Hahn’s rival from the last election, Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who’s mulling a rematch after he lost a harsh contest in which he says Hahn portrayed him “as a gang member and a drug dealer.”

And there’s Bob Hertzberg, a former roommate and ally of Villaraigosa -- until the two had a bitter falling out four years ago.

Only state Sen. Richard Alarcon seems to come to the race unencumbered by a past conflict with another candidate. He calls most of them friends, though that didn’t stop him from entering the race against Hahn because “I don’t believe my friend is doing the best job for Los Angeles.”

In the small world of Los Angeles politics, it’s no surprise that all the leading contenders know each other. But what has many political insiders catching their breath is the complex, intimate and occasionally bitter relationships among these men, Democrats all, who seek the city’s top post.

“A writer of a telenovela couldn’t have made this one more interesting,” said Councilman Eric Garcetti, who has endorsed Hahn, likening the race to the melodrama of Spanish-language soap operas.

With the passions that lie just beneath the surface, Los Angeles could be in store for an unusually vituperative race.

“Everybody is running against former allies, or former enemies, or both,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and senior scholar at USC.

Hahn, tanned from a spate of outdoor press conferences, demurred when asked about his challengers but appeared unruffled at the campaign ahead. “Campaigns, you know, are not prom dates,” he said, repeating a phrase he used three years ago to justify his attacks on Villaraigosa. “The gloves come off in a campaign, you’ve got to be able to give and take.”

The contenders, by and large, share similar liberal to moderate Democratic views. What distinguishes them are their personalities and political styles. And many of them know each other’s strengths and failings almost as well as they know their own.

None know each other better than Villaraigosa and Hertzberg, and none have a deeper or more complicated history.

Should Villaraigosa jump into the race, it would open a new chapter in a two-decade-long relationship that combined a political alliance with a close personal friendship until it collapsed about four years ago.

“That relationship is personal,” said former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre. “And it’s unfortunate, because they were two very good friends, and political circumstances created the separation.”

Hertzberg helped organize Villaraigosa’s 1994 campaign for the Assembly, then followed him up to the capital in 1996, where they became roommates by night, as many legislators are, and close allies by day on the Assembly floor.

Villaraigosa, a frenetic, backslapping deal-maker who sometimes lacks an attention to detail, was perfectly complemented by Hertzberg, a hyper-organized workaholic with a passion for flow charts and color-coded reports.

Both men also are gregarious. Villaraigosa invariably has a thousand-watt smile. And Hertzberg has long been stuck with the nickname “Huggy Bear” for his habit of embracing everyone.

Both also are ambitious and competitive.

By 1999, a rift appeared.

Villaraigosa, who was ramping up his 2001 campaign for mayor, wanted to remain speaker through the summer of 2000. But Hertzberg, who was itching to take over, went ahead and lined up support to succeed Villaraigosa.

The two men continued to live together, but barely spoke for a while. After Hertzberg took over in April 2000, the two feuded about committee assignments and campaign money.

Hertzberg took Villaraigosa off the powerful committees that the outgoing speaker had assigned to himself just days before he stepped down.

When he left office, Villaraigosa, who had raised millions for the Democratic caucus, returned $1.5 million to his party’s leadership, but held on to $1.3 million, rolling it into an account to run for state Senate. At the time, Villaraigosa defended the transfer, saying that he gave more money back to the Democrats than any previous speaker.

Hertzberg said he felt like Villaraigosa was “putting me and the institution in a difficult position.”

Both he and Villaraigosa declined to discuss their breakup in detail and now say publicly that reports of their enmity were exaggerated.

“We’ve known each other a long time, and have mostly worked well together,” Villaraigosa said. “I think he has something to offer, as do I.”

On the possibility that he might have to run against his former roommate, Hertzberg said, “I haven’t really sorted out how I feel,” noting that he is focused on his own race. But he says he and Villaraigosa are cordial. “I grab him and hug him every time I see him.”

If Villaraigosa enters the race, not only will he face Hertzberg, he’ll again come up against Hahn, whose low-key style belies a steely resolve to do what it takes on the campaign trail.

In the last days of the 2001 campaign, Hahn aired a hard-hitting campaign ad that dramatized Villaraigosa’s efforts to seek clemency for a convicted drug dealer. (Villaraigosa and other politicians wrote letters asking President Clinton to commute the dealer’s sentence, which he did.)

The ad showed a razor blade cutting cocaine, a smoking cocaine pipe and a grainy picture of Villaraigosa.

“Los Angeles can’t trust Antonio Villaraigosa,” a narrator said.

At the time, Villaraigosa accused Hahn of “gutter” politics, while Hahn said the ad just pointed out Villaraigosa’s “untrustworthiness.”

For Villaraigosa, who noted that he “saw how easy it was to demonize a guy,” the ad still stings. “My kids had to go to school and hear, ‘Your father sells drugs.’ They don’t need to hear that again,” Villaraigosa said in April.

Although the ad is seen as one of the most explosive in a Los Angeles election, Hahn says he still stands by it “100%.”

“I think a candidate’s record is part of the debate,” he said.

Parks, like Villaraigosa, has a history with Hahn.

The former police chief is widely thought to be nursing a grudge because the mayor decided not to back him for a second five-year term in 2002. Parks, who won a City Council seat in a landslide 16 months ago, denies that charge, saying his life is too rich for revenge.

But he has spent the last few months roaming Los Angeles excoriating Hahn’s leadership and alluding to federal and county probes into his administration.

Since the televised beating of car-theft suspect Stanley Miller by Los Angeles police officers last month, Parks has been outspoken in his criticism. He attacked Hahn’s new police chief, William J. Bratton, accusing him of using racially insensitive language.

The remarks could help Parks, the city’s second black police chief, solidify support among black voters, who made the difference in Hahn’s 2001 victory over Villaraigosa.

Parks said he did not feel “personally betrayed” by the mayor.

“My relationship with Mayor Hahn is that I never had a close relationship with him,” said Parks, who has worked with Hahn since the 1980s. “I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him.”

But he does accuse Hahn of betraying the office of the police chief to win the backing of the police union, whose leaders did not like Parks. “The badge of the chief of police was sold for an endorsement,” he said.

Alarcon, who was an aide to former Mayor Tom Bradley and was later a city councilman, knows all the top contenders, some of them well.

He says he met Parks in 1981 when the former chief was a liaison between the Police Department and City Hall. And he met Hahn soon after, when they worked on a criminal justice advisory committee. In the last mayoral election, Alarcon backed Villaraigosa.

Despite those relationships, he decided to run, he said, because “the city of Los Angeles is more important than any single friendship.

“I would hope that all of my friends in this race would have a very positive tone,” Alarcon said.

But many think that is unlikely.

Alatorre, the former councilman who knows the four major competitors, said, “It’ll be as dirty as it gets.”

Times staff writer Noam N. Levey contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Small world

Political insiders -- pointing to the complex, intimate and occasionally bitter relationships among the mayoral candidates -- say an unusually vituperative race could be in store for Los Angeles.

JAMES K. HAHN: The Los Angeles mayor faces a field of opponents whose political and personal lives have been intertwined for years.

BERNARD C. PARKS: The councilman and former LAPD chief worked with Hahn for years until the mayor pushed him out.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: The city councilman is mulling a rematch after he lost a harsh contest in which he says Hahn portrayed him “as a gang member and a drug dealer.”

BOB HERTZBERG: The former Assembly speaker was a roommate and ally of Villaraigosa -- until the two had a bitter falling out four years ago.

SEN. RICHARD ALARCON: He calls most of the candidates friends, though that didn’t stop him from entering the race against Hahn because “I don’t believe my friend is doing the best job for Los Angeles.”

Los Angeles Times