Will Riordan Be Able to Resist Political Sweet Talk?

Nobody knows what’s happening behind the closed doors, where some of the big guns of California business and politics are trying to persuade Mayor Richard Riordan to run for governor.

But if history is any guide, it’s a selling job of car-dealer proportions on a man who has said he doesn’t want the burden of running in this huge state, with its grueling, dirty and expensive political campaigns.

“It’s a question of how much he wants it against the irresistible siren song of the boosters who say, ‘This is your time,’ ” said a veteran of many such seduction sessions.

This seduction will be a classic, more intense than that successfully executed by the Republican big shots of the mid-’60s, who persuaded Ronald Reagan to give up acting and run for governor. They had many months to sell Reagan, and he was a willing object of their desire.

Riordan is playing hard to get, and there is only a

week until the Feb. 4 deadline for filing for governor.

But there are persuasive and wealthy people among the Riordan boosters, who have made millions, even billions, with companies that began as dreams far more remote than Riordan’s chances of becoming governor.

They have in common a belief in attaining the apparently impossible. The Democrats among them also want to find a moderate political replacement for their favorite, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who decided against running.

I talked to a person who heard two of the business boosters--wealthy and visionary developers Don Bren and Eli Broad--make this pitch directly to the mayor.

Today, no doubt, some of them are in their corporate offices in Los Angeles, Orange County or Silicon Valley, calling Riordan to pump him up for a race.

For the past few weeks, Riordan has been telling them that he does not want to engage in statewide fund-raising. He insists that he’s done his public service by being mayor. He wants to relax, to bicycle, ski, play bridge, entertain his book club, play with his dogs and maybe--just for old times’ sake--lead the hostile takeover of a sick corporation.

Retire? the boosters will reply. You’re too young to retire, a kid at 67, in the prime of life. They’ll cite some of history’s famous active codgers--the pope, Castro, Churchill.

They’ll tell him you’re the guy, the only one who can win. You’ll be a great governor. You can do everything you wanted to do as mayor--and more. You’ll fix up every public school, make sure every poor California kid gets to play on a level field.

We’ll raise the money for you. So you don’t want to live in Sacramento. Reagan didn’t often spend more than a few days a week there. We’ll buy the state a jet so you can commute to Brentwood.

Then the political managers will join the seduction with their game plans and their numbers that outline the new arithmetic of California politics--the most persuasive argument for Riordan running, and the reason why he has a good chance of winning.

The political consultants--or hacks, as they’re known in the trade--will say California politics are changing, and no longer can be dominated by extremes of the right and the left.

They’ll say your own political career proves that--a moderate Republican who beat two liberal Democrats in mayoral elections in a historically Democratic city. In doing so, he won the votes of Democrats and Republicans, forming a moderate political coalition new to this city.

They’ll remind him that he was supported by the two new forces in California politics, Latinos and women. In the last election, Riordan won 59% of the vote of women and was backed by 60% of Latino voters, according to the Times Poll.

And if the Republicans have a fatal weakness in California today, it is among Latinos and moderate women.

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The GOP has done major harm to itself in the Latino community with Gov. Pete Wilson’s support of two ballot measures--Proposition 187, which was designed to limit aid to illegal immigrants, and Proposition 209, which banned government affirmative action programs. And, the antiabortion stand of Republican conservatives cost GOP candidates votes in moderate districts, particularly among women.

Finally, the political managers will say, the entire electoral dynamic will change this year with the open primary, permitting Californians to jump party lines and vote for the person instead of the party.

The person rather than the party. Golden words from a California past when politics were less partisan and business, labor and politicians teamed up for mammoth enterprises like the State Water Project.

As the finale of their presentation, the political managers will invoke the sacred name of Earl Warren, a great governor beloved by Democrats and Republicans.

Nobody knows if all this will melt Riordan’s heart. Time is short. But as any reporter who has been worked over by a political hack will tell you, don’t underestimate their persuasive skills.

Riordan may be perfectly sincere when he says he is not going to run.

We’ll just wait and see whether he feels the same way after a week of persuasion, seduction and appeals to his ego and sense of public duty.