Riordan Ignores First Week of Hayden Campaign Attacks

Week One of Tom Hayden’s campaign to unseat Mayor Richard Riordan:

Sunday, Jan. 5: Announced candidacy with a barrage of barbs at Riordan, who was vacationing in Idaho. Tuesday: While in Sacramento for the governor’s State of the State address, issued critiques of Riordan’s hard-fought charter reform drive. Wednesday: Held a news conference to castigate the Riordan administration for the city’s use of Chevron gasoline. Thursday: Held news conference blaming the mayor for Peter O’Malley’s decision to sell the Dodgers. Blasted Riordan for his 1994 appointment of the wife of a political ally to the high-paying Board of Public Works. Friday: While Riordan participated in a contentious board meeting of the troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority, held a news conference at MTA headquarters to criticize the mayor’s leadership. Saturday: Put on a “campaign kickoff” on the steps of City Hall.

Week One of Mayor Richard Riordan’s public schedule now that Tom Hayden is in the race: Ignored Hayden. Kept an exceedingly low public profile all week. His press office listed just one “public event”--the Wednesday opening of a new Pep Boys auto parts store in the Riordan-friendly San Fernando Valley.

“I haven’t even thought about it. I’ve been much too busy being mayor,” Riordan said when reporters at the store opening asked him about the Hayden candidacy.

For a while at least, Riordan can probably get away with that tactic, several campaign consultants said.

“There is a time to campaign and a time not to--and it’s too early now,” said Republican campaign consultant Allan Hoffenblum. He said that most voters won’t start paying attention until about 45 days before it’s time to go to the polls. The April 8 primary is still nearly three months away.

Even then, it is “the voters the mayor needs to have a dialogue with, not Tom Hayden,” Hoffenblum said. “They’re the only people that can fire him.”

Steven Afriat, a Valley-based Democratic consultant, said it is smart politics for Riordan to ignore Hayden’s jibes.

“He’s the incumbent, he’s the front-runner, and unless that starts to change, it would not be wise for him to risk lending credibility to Hayden by responding to anything he has to say.”

But Afriat, who is a Riordan-appointed member of a city policy-setting commission, said Riordan does need to start making more public appearances.

“He needs to get start getting more visible now. . . . I would have him out at public appearances more.”

Pressed to provide a counterpoint to Hayden’s doings, Riordan’s office produced an extensive “sampling” of the mayor’s activities during the past week, including a meeting to discuss the search for a new MTA executive director and a television interview Monday, his first day back in town.

Other activities included meetings with labor leaders and others regarding a controversial “living wage” ordinance being debated at City Hall, telephone calls to Dodgers owner O’Malley and acting baseball commissioner Bud Selig, a tour of the Union Rescue Mission on downtown’s skid row and calls to Washington about airport issues.

The entrance into the mayor’s race by Hayden, a Democratic West Side state senator who gained national prominence as a 1960s anti-war activist, added some sizzle to what was looking to be a predictable election. With favorable poll numbers and early, aggressive fund-raising, Riordan had drawn no substantial opponent until Hayden jumped in. Although pundits give his candidacy very long odds, the attention he will bring to the race is important, they say.

“Hayden knows how to campaign, he is a credible candidate, and the press will pay far more attention to the race,” Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at the Claremont Graduate School, said last month when word got out that Hayden was getting in. “Riordan will have to pay more attention . . . and maybe the voters will too.”

But not just now. Riordan campaign consultant Bill Carrick downplayed the impact of Hayden’s vigorous first week on the stump.

“He is epitomizing what people don’t like about politics, the bickering, the finger-pointing,” Carrick said.

“We’ll respond to the extent of trying to correct the record. Like that baloney about the MTA. We’ll point out that we wouldn’t even have an MTA if it weren’t for Tom and his colleagues in the Legislature. . . . But we’re not going to get dragged into a slugfest with him day to day.

“We are a long way from the election. There is time for campaigning . . . but the world doesn’t revolve around Tom Hayden’s own personal career clock.”

Patricia Shin, Hayden’s campaign manager, shrugged off Riordan’s silence.

“We are going to continue to speak to the issues no matter what he does,” Shin said.

In the week since Hayden’s announcement, campaign staffers have been fielding calls from community groups asking for speaking engagements, offering help and asking to set up debates with Riordan, she said. Starting Monday, the office will begin releasing weekly notices of Hayden’s upcoming activities, and the senator has begun walking precincts and meeting with homeowner groups and other organizations.

“We’ve had contact with voters, we’ve been talking about solutions that will make Los Angeles more livable,” Shin said. “And we are getting tremendous response.”