Many people are wondering why Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan suddenly feels impelled to rub shoulders with Jews.
Since winning the June 8 nonpartisan election on a platform of law, order and renewed prosperity, Riordan, a multimillionaire with Republican leanings, has forged the kind of Jewish coalition other politicians build before elections.
The mayor has appointed almost a dozen active members of the Jewish community, which was all but ignored toward the end of the 20-year Tom Bradley administration, to blue-chip city panels. Among them are Stanley Hirsh, former president of the Jewish Federation Council, as chairman of the Community Redevelopment Agency Commission, and former American Jewish Committee director Rabbi Gary Greenbaum, as head of the Police Commission.
Until his election, Riordan hadn't been the darling of the Jewish community. During the campaign, some Jews raised the issue of his membership in the Los Angeles Country Club, which has a reputation for excluding Jews, blacks and Hispanics. And a former Riordan campaign strategist, who asked not to be named, told The Jerusalem Report that the mayor had never been particularly attuned to Jewish sensibilities.
Harold Meyerson, executive editor of the L.A. Weekly newspaper, says Democratic candidate Mike Woo failed miserably to allay concerns over burgeoning crime, falling property values and a local economy in desperate straits. "Woo received as close to nothing as a Democrat can get among white, non-Jewish voters," he observed, "and he didn't do so good with Jewish voters either."
"Had the Jews voted the way they normally do, Mike Woo would be mayor today," says Zev Yaroslavsky, city councilman for the heavily Jewish Beverly-Fairfax district. "My district, the most progressive Anglo district in L.A., 63 percent Democratic, went 57 percent for Riordan."
Yaroslavsky calls the mayor's Jewish appointments "smart and methodical." The Jewish councilman says Riordan is trying to keep together the same coalition that responded to his message: "The city is in trouble, so let's stop messing around." Sheli Teitelbaum / Los Angeles