A Hands-On Mayor All the Way : Bradley’s Trademark Common Touch Will Soon Be Replaced by a New Order of Business at City Hall

Mayor Tom Bradley was hard at work Thursday morning, toiling to make the city a better place. But the city’s veteran chief executive officer was not flipping through top secret papers at his massive wooden desk. And he was not in some critical City Hall meeting, debating bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.

The mayor was out at Echo Park shaking hands and sitting by the lake, helping to promote next month’s 16th annual Lotus Festival.

The Lotus Festival? That’s right.

Echo Park is home to the largest lotus patch in the country, organizer Tiffany Soohoo said, and every year 100,000 celebrants gather around it to highlight the city’s diverse Asian cultures. The mayor was there to draw attention to the event, which will take place July 10 and 11, just as the lotuses are coming into bloom.

“The mayor comes to all the Lotus Festivals,” said organizer Debby L. Rolland. “I think he’s missed one in 16 years.”

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More mundane mayoral business also took place on Thursday--the signatures, the directives, the meetings and telephone conversations that mayors are all about. But the handshakes and visits, the festivals and awards banquets have been Bradley’s trademarks over his 20 years as mayor.

Although there are just 20 days to go in his final term and his staff is busy boxing up his treasures, Bradley has continued his long days in and out of the office. Mayor-elect Richard Riordan says he hates the ceremonial part of public office and wishes he had a stand-in to do it for him.

From Echo Park, Bradley’s chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car shuttled him to the next order of business for America’s second-largest city: a lunchtime awards banquet at the Biltmore Hotel for a downtown business group.

He munched on meat and broccoli with the people who fill the upper floors of L.A.’s downtown skyscrapers and received another memento for his trophy case.

“We’ve given this man so many awards before, we had to invent a new one,” architect Chris Martin said in presenting the mayor with a lifetime achievement award whose Sierra white granite base came from the very same quarry that produced the building blocks of City Hall.

A veteran at the podium, Bradley brought the house down with this quip: “What he didn’t tell you is the Sierra white granite is the same material they use to make headstones.”

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Every politician attends ribbon cuttings and other events outside the office, but such visits usually peak at election time and the underlying reason often boils down to politics.

That can’t entirely explain the two parades, six awards ceremonies and tributes to Habitat for Humanity, Skid Row Development Corp., the Metro Red Line and African-American History Month that Bradley attended in February alone.

“He’s at these things earlier than he has to be and sometimes he stays long after it’s over,” said Ron Wakabayashi, executive director of the city’s Human Relations Commission and a friend of Bradley. “He genuinely enjoys these things.”

Over the years, he has been photographed with Miss Universe, placed stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and dedicated senior citizen centers, buildings, playgrounds and parks. Every Christmas, hundreds of city employees line up with their children outside the mayor’s office for a snapshot with him.

Last month, Bradley got a letter from a San Gabriel youngster inviting the mayor to the boy’s fourth-grade class. Bradley’s schedule was tight but he knew a representative wouldn’t do. He shuffled things around and showed up.

The mayor corresponded for years with a boy he met at a similar sixth-grade event. They exchanged Christmas cards over many years and Bradley learned recently that Bob Pandya had just graduated from medical school.

Wakabayashi said it is the mayor’s attendance at cultural events that has been so crucial in this city of many tongues. “It’s more than shaking hands,” he said. “He’s making people feel like they belong.”

Riordan already acknowledges that the stream of neighborhood visits will be scaled back come July 1. The troubles that the city is facing, he says, are too pressing for him to spend much time on ceremony. “There’s no way that I can do what Mayor Bradley’s done and run this city effectively,” he said.

Lotus Festival organizers cannot remember seeing Riordan at any past events and the next mayor was off in Sacramento on Thursday and had to turn down his invitation to the business awards ceremony.

“Please accept my warmest congratulations . . . ,” Riordan said in a polite note that may signal a change in mayoral protocol, “and my regrets that I cannot be with you today.”