LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : They Race for Votes on Radio, at Churches

With only a day left to salvage a lost week, eight Los Angeles mayoral contenders seized one of their last opportunities to challenge the front-runners in the race.

Egged on by radio talk show host and former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, the candidates spent a substantial portion of four on-air hours Sunday saying why they thought neither City Councilman Michael Woo nor businessman Richard Riordan should be mayor. Woo and Riordan both declined invitations to speak on the show.

Frustrated by the city’s preoccupation with jury deliberations in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial, several of the eight candidates took turns bashing Woo and Riordan on the Sunday afternoon radio program, while others struggled to get a word in edgewise about their own platforms. For some of the candidates, it was a frustrating free-for-all.

“Chief, this is a lousy format,” candidate Julian Nava complained at one point.

Teeing off early and often, City Councilman Joel Wachs led the attack on the two front-runners. He proceeded to characterize Woo as a tool of special interests and accused Riordan of misleading the public by casting himself as an outsider in the race.

Earlier in the show, Wachs, who has had to weather criticism that he was too supportive of Gates after the 1991 King beating, said that Gates was prevented by the council from preparing for last year’s riots.

Even though Woo and Riordan are ahead in fund raising and the polls, they were taking no chances on the final Sunday before the election. Both spent much of the day courting their prime constituencies.

Woo spent the morning speaking at several churches in the Mid-City and South-Central Los Angeles areas in an effort to bolster his support among African-American voters.

In a whirlwind tour of eight churches, he delivered one message--that the verdicts in the King federal civil rights trial are only the beginning of what should be continuing reforms in the city.

“We have to remember the verdict yesterday convicted two police officers,” Woo told an overflow early morning crowd at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. “But the verdicts yesterday did not create one job, the verdicts did not create one business, the verdicts did not take one homeless man or woman off the street.”

A day after widespread praise for the convictions in the King case, Woo portrayed himself as a unity candidate and Riordan as a divisive force. Tough anti-crime rhetoric is designed “to play on people’s fears and anxieties,” Woo said. “But let us remember that we are one city, brothers and sisters.”

Woo repeatedly reminded the audiences of his early stand in favor of the removal of Gates. And he mentioned Police Chief Willie L. Williams, saying that the hiring of the popular African-American chief represents the kind of reforms he wants to continue.

Riordan spent Sunday pushing his law-and-order message while walking precincts in a neighborhood in the predominantly white, conservative-voting west San Fernando Valley. (He was going to spend the rest of the afternoon preparing for a KTTV debate tonight with Woo and Linda Griego, who has finished third in some polls.)

At every home, Riordan asked the same question, “Do you agree with me? The three major issues are safety, safety, safety.”

Some of the voters said they considered education and the economy important. Riordan responded, “Before you can get a good education, before you can get a job, you’ve got to make the city safe.”

But the rest of the candidates were not ceding anything to the front-runners.

In fact, the Woo entourage ran smack into candidate Richard Katz at Paradise Baptist Church. Katz, a state assemblyman, trashed the news media and won loud applause when he said: “The city would just be better off if they would go home and let us repair the city.”

And he took the edge off what has sometimes been a hard law enforcement message, saying: “We didn’t need the National Guard or the Marine Corps to fix our city. We can do it together, person to person.”

Outside yet another church, Second Baptist, Councilman Nate Holden’s supporters tried to make the best of their candidate’s many years of photo opportunities. They distributed three separate flyers. One showed Holden and a smiling Earvin (Magic) Johnson, another pictured the councilman “working together” with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and a third was of Holden shaking hands with Mayor Bradley.

None of the three, however, has endorsed Holden, and the councilman and mayor have been bitter rivals since they faced off in the 1989 mayoral contest.

At stops in Hollywood, Griffith Park and the Mid-Wilshire area, Griego appeared with her trademark cardboard cutouts of her male rivals. “The biggest hit was at the KFI (radio) debate. We took Riordan and Woo (cutouts). They stood outside the door,” symbolizing their failure to make the appearance, Griego campaign manager Roy Behr said.

In a random call-in poll during a two-hour show Sunday evening on the African-American radio station KGFJ-AM, listeners gave 17 votes to Woo, most citing his call for Gates’ resignation after the Rodney King incident. They gave 16 votes to another candidate, black businessman and Rhodes scholar Stan Standers, because, as one said, he is “from the neighborhood.” Other candidates got a smattering of two or three votes; Riordan drew none.

Times staff writers John Schwada and Frank Clifford contributed to this story.