Is Dick ready?

By most accounts, former mayor of Los Angeles and current Republican candidate for governor, Richard Riordan, is a nice enough fellow.

Like every candidate, he has his faults—leaving his politics aside, Riordan can be inarticulate, self-conscious and is not particularly an expert on public policy. But, by and large, Riordan overcomes his deficits as a candidate by a seemingly sincere desire to relate to people from all classes, political persuasions and races. Which is no small thing for a 71-year-old white Republican worth north of $100 million.

His campaign emphasizes Riordan’s personal virtues at every turn—the campaign slogan is “Tough Enough to Turn California Around.” Tough as he may be, the question of whether he’s ready for a knockdown, drag-out fight with Gray Davis—provided he wins the Republican nomination—hardly comes up. At first glance, Riordan’s readiness would seem to be a given. After all, he was mayor of Los Angeles for eight years.

But on a recent swing through California on a bus filled with journalists and supporters, Riordan and his campaign displayed a “not ready for prime time” side that should give pause to his supporters who are buoyed by current polls that put him marginally ahead of Governor Davis.

The most egregious example is what became known among the four reporters on the bus on Tuesday, January 29, as “the blowup.”

That morning as the Riordan bus pulled out of the downtown Hyatt in Sacramento, Riordan strode from the front of the bus to where the reporters were, toward the rear. He told Los Angeles Times reporter Carla Hall that he wanted to have a private conversation with her and took her to the back of the bus, about five feet away from the other journalists on board. Hall was working on a profile on Riordan and had been trailing him on other legs of the bus tour. The other reporters present were Michael Finnegan, also from the Los Angeles Times, Bill Bradley who writes for the L.A. Weekly and the American Prospect, and a reporter from the News & Review.

After about five minutes of what seemed like reasoned give and take over a subject that wasn’t completely audible to the rest of the bus, Riordan uncharacteristically blew a fuse. His face a shade of beet red, Riordan—who was only a foot or two from Hall—screamed at her, “I don’t want to talk to you anymore!” and then added, “Get out of here!” Riordan was still staring angrily at Hall when his deputy communications director, Carolina Guevara, led him to the front of the bus. Hall was visibly stunned, but didn’t move and no one from the campaign asked her to leave the bus. Soon, Riordan and his entourage arrived at his first stop that morning, a printing company in Sacramento.

Hall said later that she and Riordan were discussing the details of his daughter’s death. According to a 1993 Los Angeles Times profile on Riordan, his daughter died of complications from bulimia in the early 1980s. Actually, according to a campaign aide, she died of complications from anorexia nervosa.

Hall said that during the conversation, Riordan told her that he didn’t want the cause of his daughter’s death in the profile. When Hall mentioned that it had been in print before so she couldn’t understand his reluctance to see the details of his daughter’s death in the profile, Riordan explained that it would be “hurtful” if she used it. Hall then explained that she wasn’t trying to hurt the mayor, but felt that since it was already in the public forum, she could use it. Hall said Riordan then told her: “Then we don’t have anything else to talk about,” and then exploded.

Hall, who has been a reporter for 25 years, said that she had never seen a public figure react in such a way to a reporter. Bradley, also a veteran reporter and former campaign aide, said the same thing.

In a conversation with the News & Review, Riordan aide Guevara requested that this paper also not publish the cause of Riordan’s daughter’s death, saying, “obviously, it’s a wound that’s very deep.” She added candidates should keep some semblance of their privacy, even though they’re running for public office.

“There’s a certain zone of privacy that reporters have come to respect—we saw that with Chelsea Clinton,” Guevara said. “We shouldn’t have to abrogate that zone because this daughter is deceased.”

But that’s a tricky issue. For the past two decades, reporters have delved more deeply into the private lives of public officials than ever before. What once was taboo—like reporting politicians’ extra-marital affairs—is now considered open territory for journalists. While certainly the death of a daughter from an eating disorder isn’t the same thing as a secret affair, Riordan’s reaction about an episode in his life that’s been in the public domain indicates that his campaign will have to adjust to a heightened level of scrutiny now that he is running for a statewide office.

“There’s no question that the statewide news media opens a candidate to a higher level of scrutiny than the L.A. news media,” said Dan Schnur, a long-time Republican campaign adviser.

Schnur, who worked on Riordan’s exploratory committee, said that Riordan shouldn’t be faulted for his reaction. If anything, his campaign staff shouldn’t have let the conversation happen, Schnur said.

“The worst thing that could happen is to allow a candidate to negotiate the terms of what personal details can be used,” Schnur said. “You have to avoid a situation where a candidate is in that kind of conversation with a reporter.”

Right after the incident, Hall was unsure of whether her access to Riordan was permanently cut off. She eventually did get to talk with him again, for almost an hour. While Riordan never apologized for the outburst, he did communicate to Hall that he understood that she was just doing her job, she said. He also conveyed again how hurtful it would be to see the cause of his daughter’s death in the paper. But Riordan didn’t make Hall agree to any ground rules to get the interview. And, she said, she wouldn’t have accepted any conditions anyway.

“I wasn’t going to put any conditions on the interview,” Hall said. “It’s a profile of a man who’s running for governor of California. All aspects of his private life will be looked at.

“That’s just part of what it’s like to be in political life these days.”