Posted on 02/19/2002 2:40:20 AM PST by Gothmog
Second in a three-part series
When Richard Riordan makes a speech, chances are he'll weave in a quote from 12th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides.
But quiz him on whether California abortion law should be changed -- as reporters did recently before he spoke to a Republican women's group -- and his response lacks the detail you might expect from someone who can quote medieval scholars at will.
"I don't know the answer to that," the former Los Angeles mayor said. "I should understand, but I don't. But I will."
It turns out that very little about Riordan, a lawyer, venture capitalist and one of three top Republicans seeking the governor's office this year, is easy to pin down.
Considered a liberal, perhaps even to the left of Democratic Gov. Davis on some issues, Riordan is the hardest candidate to categorize. A quick study of his alliances and ideology shows that he is largely a man of contradictions:
A devout Roman Catholic who once said he considers abortion "murder," he nonetheless supports abortion rights and the death penalty.
He helped spearhead the recall effort against California Chief Justice Rose Bird, who he saw as anti-business. Yet he has also donated thousands of dollars to some of the most left-leaning Democrats in the state.
Though he's the oldest gubernatorial candidate at 71, he's a long-distance bicyclist whose physician, Dr. Charles McElroy, describes him as a "remarkable specimen."
He's not particularly polished or pretentious, despite his Ivy League credentials and his multimillionaire status. At campaign events, his hair is often awry. He gobbles down food without heed to the crumbs sticking to the sides of his mouth. He likes sandwiches made with peanut butter, lettuce and tomato.
And during speeches, the man who likes to luxuriate in the oratory of Winston Churchill and English writer G.K. Chesterton is likely to stumble on his words and wander off the prepared text, terrifying his campaign advisers.
"Dick has always been independent. He charts and follows his own course to a large extent," said Charles B. Renfrew, a former federal judge and former deputy U.S. attorney general who attended law school with Riordan. "Dick is just one of those people that pretty much says what he thinks."
Riordan's political philosophy, and his attraction to Republican ideals, grew in part out of his experience as a businessman.
He believes government should be run like a company, bureaucracies should be trimmed of their fat and managers should be held accountable for their departments' performance -- or risk being fired.
He argues that strong businesses, a healthy economy and an emphasis on self-sufficiency will lift people out of poverty.
"(This) is what differentiates Republicans from a lot of other people," he said. "We care about the poor. We care about the working men and women. But what we want to do is give them empowerment, the freedom to be successful people standing on their own two feet."
Riordan parlayed an $80,000 inheritance from his father into a fortune that was estimated at about $100 million when he first ran for mayor in 1993. He claims not to know his net worth now.
He was one of the original investors in computer manufacturer Convergent Technologies. He purchased and sold a little more than a block of downtown Los Angeles property -- he still owns the landmark Original Pantry Cafe downtown. And he jumped in when toy maker Mattel was on the brink of insolvency.
Mattel has become a campaign issue because the restructuring resulted in the closing of a Los Angeles-area factory, which sent hundreds of jobs to Mexico. Riordan disputes that jobs were lost, and insists that on the whole, his buyouts actually saved jobs.
"Every one of those workers was offered and given, if they wanted, other jobs at Mattel," he said. "If we didn't come in and restructure, it could have resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs."
Riordan is running his campaign largely management-style, marketing his business-like approach as preferable to that of Davis, a known micromanager.
He sells himself as a leader who will hire "the best and brightest" people to run his administration and "empower" them to make decisions.
"I'm not a person who looks at polls before I act," Riordan said when he officially announced his candidacy in November. "I'm not a person who is afraid to act because I might make mistakes."
Supporters say Riordan's management style was key to his success during his two terms as mayor. Without Riordan, said developer Tom Gilmore, his proposal to redevelop downtown buildings would have been mired in bureaucratic limbo.
"I didn't need to do a long song and dance," Gilmore said. "The mayor really helped us to cut through some of the red tape that existed. It was the mayor's stamp of approval that enabled us to go to department heads instead of going through a long and tortuous bureaucracy."
The developer estimates that Riordan's support helped make 250 new housing units available a year and a half faster than usual.
But talk to some of the elected officials who served with Riordan, or in the bureaucracy that he so disparaged, and praise for Riordan's management is rare.
Instead, they describe an impatient manager with a short attention span and an overworked, constantly defecting staff.
"He had six or seven chiefs of staffs over the years. If he doesn't like how something is going, they're just gone," said state Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles.
Goldberg was a Los Angeles city councilwoman for most of Riordan's tenure. "He ran (the city) like it was a leveraged buyout," she said.
On the campaign trail, Riordan proudly tells a story about an event that occurred early in his first term as mayor.
At the time, leaders of the city's bustling fashion district complained that customers' cars were being towed after 3 p.m. every day.
When one of Riordan's deputy mayors produced a complicated 50-page plan to do away with the tow-away zones over several years, the mayor balked and told him to come up with a simple, quick solution.
The deputy delivered. He and his son, under cover of night, snuck into the fashion district and took down the tow-away signs themselves.
"Needless to say, I promoted him," Riordan says of the deputy.
While small-government supporters cheer Riordan's story as progress, Goldberg said the tale provides a telling warning that Riordan doesn't respect rules or established processes.
Keith Comrie, the city's administrative officer for 19 years, said Riordan -- who chastises Davis for his lukewarm relations with the state Legislature -- clearly didn't foster good relationships with city officials himself.
He cited Riordan's campaign to reform the city charter, including a component aimed at giving the mayor more authority to fire city officials.
Many of Riordan's reforms were scaled down because the City Council, wary that the mayor was attempting to strong-arm more power, fought back.
"It was his way or no way," Comrie said. "He couldn't function with 15 council members. How could he function with a 120-member legislative body?"
Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas also said Riordan didn't respect the culture of government and offended many key city leaders and workers.
"He rejects the notion of checks and balances," Ridley-Thomas said. "He's a venture capitalist by disposition. He's used to the rough-and-tumble of hostile acquisition and not the more civilized approach to consensus building."
Riordan shrugged off the criticism, saying he had good relationships with other city officials. He added that he would treat lawmakers in Sacramento the same.
"I did get along with the majority of the council," he said. "I got 98 percent or 99 percent of what I wanted through."
Riordan is less willing to discuss some of the personal struggles he faced in the years before he became mayor.
Between 1964 and 1975, Riordan was arrested on three alcohol-related charges: twice for drunken driving and once for interfering with a police officer.
He says, when pressed, that he was a young lawyer at the time, working long hours. Sometimes, he said, he and other lawyers would get drinks after work.
"One night a week, we'd finish and go out and start drinking and sometimes drank too much," he said. "I'm not proud of what I did 30 years ago."
Today, Riordan says he has a glass of wine, "sometimes a glass and a half," three nights a week. He also uses a driver during the week "because I can get a lot done in the car."
At the time of his arrests, Riordan was married to Eugenia Warady, his first wife. The couple had five children together, two of whom died tragically. His only son died in a diving accident and a daughter succumbed to complications from an eating disorder.
Riordan's marriages to Warady and to his second wife, Jill Noel Riordan, both ended in divorce. In 1998 he married his third and current wife, Nancy Daly Riordan, during his second term as mayor.
As his term drew to a close, he underwent radiation therapy for early stage prostate cancer.
News of the diagnosis, which he didn't disclose until he was ready to run for governor, raised questions about Riordan's health and his ability to weather the trials of political life for an additional eight years, if need be.
But Riordan's oncologist, Dr. Derek Raghavan of the University of Southern California, dismissed any doubters.
Raghavan, who said the former mayor has "got the constitution of a bull," said the treatments were a success and Riordan has been cancer-free since. He also proclaimed Riordan otherwise healthy.
An avid bicyclist, ice skater and skier, Riordan is notorious for challenging his young staff members to races -- and winning.
He also loves to read, retreating to his two-story library when he's not exercising or campaigning.
His personal philosophy is grounded in the scholars that fill the shelves of his 40,000-book collection, and in his lifelong study and practice of Catholicism.
The son of an Irish immigrant who was president of Stern Bros. department store in New York, Riordan attended Cranwell Preparatory School in Massachusetts, an all-male boarding school where he attended Mass five days a week and classes six.
Though he was raised privileged and protected -- he was the youngest of eight children -- Riordan spurned invitations from the more elite clubs at Princeton University. He joined a dining club with his roommate Ted McAlister, a self-described "scholarship kid" from Texas.
Riordan and McAlister shared many long talks about religion and ethics. As a philosophy major, Riordan focused on the work of an early Catholic scholar.
"We were very religious boys," said McAlister, 70, who recalls that he and Riordan often debated the morality of war.
A pacifist as a young man, McAlister said he would have "found it very hard to go to the service at that time." Riordan, on the other hand, joined the Army.
Though the Korean War was raging, Riordan wasn't shipped overseas until August 1953, after the armistice was signed. He spent almost 10 months in Korea, serving as a field artillery first lieutenant.
Riordan returned home in May 1954 and enrolled in the University of Michigan Law School, where, according to campaign literature from his first mayoral bid, he graduated first in his law school class.
Riordan's grounding in Catholicism continued to have a significant influence on his business and personal life.
He formed close ties to Cardinal Roger Mahony, leading a group that bought a helicopter for the Los Angeles archbishop. He also contributed heavily to charitable organizations.
In 1981, he established the Riordan Foundation, which focuses on childhood literacy. The organization has spent about $33 million on various charitable programs and donated about 21,000 computers to schools across the country.
Riordan says helping the poor is also one of his main political goals. But he acknowledges his approach doesn't fit neatly into any political category.
"What is in the best interest of the poor is maybe a very liberal thought, but the implementation is very conservative," he said. "The implementation is to help businesses be successful in the state."
YES, HE IS A LAWYER, NEED I SAY MORE???
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