Name-Dropping : The Field Is Cut to 2--but the Losing Candidates Had Their Moments

The balloons are flat and so is the champagne and, maybe now, so is the campaign. The party’s over for the biggest, oddest cast of characters ever to crowd onto a Los Angeles city ballot. Now appearing on the dance floor: two serious men in dark suits.

No more Linda Griego, who put on a fire-engine red blazer and walked through a forest of gray cardboard cutouts of her male rivals in the most memorable television ad of this campaign. No more Nick Patsaouras, (pronounced Pat-sa-OH-rus) a candidate whose battle against obscurity became clear the day he tried to leave a message at the Los Angeles Times and the operator wrote down “Nick Pet Service.”

No more Eileen Anderson, self-described dancing landmark, (this is how she wanted to be known on the ballot but the city reduced her to a singer-dancer). No more Adam Bregman, a 22-year-old writer-musician who funded his quest for mayor by selling lemonade outside City Hall for 25 cents a cup.

The race to the June 8 general election promises to be feisty, even nasty, the experts predict. But will it be the same without the biggest field of candidates to run for mayor this century, the most diverse bunch in the city’s history?

Candidate Nate Holden answered that question thusly: “Good riddance.”

“I don’t know why they came along in the first place,” Holden said, mopping his brow as the polls closed and the bad news trickled in.

It began with 52 people latching onto the mathematics of hope. The unbeatable Tom Bradley announced his retirement after 20 years and there was no clear front-runner in the race. The pundits said anyone who could capture 17% of the vote could advance to the runoff. So many people took out election papers that for a time it seemed easier to count the ones who were not running for mayor.

The field quickly narrowed to 24, and for a few months they all dared to dream. Last night there were parties all over town. All but two of them were hosted by losers.

Nearly 200 exuberant Stan Sanders supporters gathered at a glitzy Westside ballroom. Sanders For Mayor breath mints decorated tables. But even at his victory party, Sanders was having trouble with name recognition. The bartender, unaware that Sanders was the guest of honor, charged him $2 for an orange juice.

“If things don’t work out, I’m still going to be pleased. I have attempted to raise issues that I believe the city has to deal with, and I feel I have succeeded in doing that,” he said, mentioning the hole in his shoe, one of three pairs he wore out campaigning.

To the very end, it was a battle between the rich and the not rich enough.

Multimillionaire venture capitalist Richard Riordan, who wrote himself $3 million in checks and made his way to the runoff, moved through a fancy ballroom at the Radisson Hotel in Sherman Oaks before being whisked off to a private suite. Security was heavy, including a number of off-duty LAPD officers wearing earphones like Secret Service agents.

A few miles away at the Joel Wachs party, about 50 people were sweating over cheese and crackers in a bare-bones storefront. “We couldn’t afford a place with an air conditioner,” an aide said.

Tom Houston was facing facts even before the polls closed. He announced his celebration would be Friday at a Los Angeles Cajun restaurant where the King Brothers Blues Bank will console him with a rendition of “Even White Boys Get the Blues.”

Melrose Larry Green, the actor/tax preparer who got arrested early on for overzealously campaigning with a Cajun-fried fish, spent election night in front of his TV on the floor of his apartment with a plate of grapefruit, vowing never to surrender.

“This is not the end of Melrose Larry Green. Now you’ll see just how smart I am,” he boomed, promising to devote all his energy to making sure that Michael Woo, the other finalist, is not the next mayor of Los Angeles.

It was bound to be a circus from the start. At the first candidate debate at Los Angeles City College in December, the moderators devised a system of raising colored cards to signal the debaters when to start talking and when to stop. Red meant go and green meant stop. Go figure.

The candidates spruced up their personal lives to relate to the common man. Riordan got rid of his luxury Japanese-built Infiniti and bought an American-made red Ford Explorer. (Later he retained a chauffeur to drive him around in it.)

From there it was an arms-flailing struggle to climb out of the pit of obscurity.

So starved for attention was Houston that he held an underwater news conference to illustrate his plan to clean up the polluted Santa Monica Bay. He had trouble breathing and had to be rescued. The only reporter who showed up to cover the event got seasick and threw up in the bay.

It soon became apparent that crime would be this campaign’s No. 1 issue. Each candidate tried to outdo the other in tough talk.

Richard Katz put on a leather jacket and filmed a mean TV commercial in front of a wall of much-reviled graffiti; the wall turned out to be fake. Wachs couldn’t find the words to express just how much he hates the ugly scrawls and let it slip to a group of homeowners that he would like to “chop a few fingers off”; they applauded.

Every day there was a candidate forum somewhere. The candidates finally got sick of them and stopped showing up. A Times reporter arrived to cover one at a local high school late in the race and not a single major candidate was there. Those in the audience ran up to greet him. “I felt like Ghandi getting off the train,” the reporter said.

This was a race first upstaged by a heady national election, then Christmas, then the inauguration of a new President, then the waiting for the Rodney G. King verdicts. But even if the L.A. mayor’s race wasn’t on everybody’s lips, the ingenuity of the candidates was usually fun to watch.

When they appeared before a Jewish audience, they put on yarmulkes. When they were before an African-American audience, they quoted Martin Luther King Jr. When they were in front of Mensa, the club of the super-smart, they mentioned their master’s degrees.

Riordan embraced an American idol and held himself up as the man who saved Barbie. (He actually saved the Mattel Co. from insolvency.)

Holden, who campaigned under a cloud of accusations that he sexually harassed three former aides, responded to women protesting his candidacy outside his office by calling the police and having them arrested.

Green trotted around an autographed picture of Jessica Hahn that said: “You’ll Always Be My Mayor.”

But then there were two. Still, the losers left their marks.

Griego’s cardboard cutout rivals stood at the entrance of her election night party at Engine Co. 28, the downtown restaurant she co-owns. She challenged better-known, bigger-spending rivals on a shoestring budget.

“Regardless of the outcome,” campaign manager Roy Behr said, “a star was born.”