Riordan & Hayden: some call them Catholic - Richard Riordan and Tom Hayden as mayoralty candidates for Los Angeles, California - Column

The mayoral race in Los Angeles, to be decided on April 8, pits two well-known Irish Catholics against one another, Republican incumbent Richard Riordan and his challenger, Democrat Tom Hayden. Both claim a Catholic heritage, but in divergent ways. Riordan identifies his spirituality with the institutional church; Hayden has crafted a syncretistic belief system that sees Catholicism as but one source of insight among others.

Riordan is a follower of the Reagan doctrine that the best remedy for inner-city poverty and racial division is economic growth. He has slashed corporate taxes and created incentives for businesses to stay in Los Angeles; he recently cut a multimillion dollar deal with Dreamworks, the entertainment colossus, to persuade the company not to abandon its Playa Vista site. He has consistently opposed efforts to legislate a higher minimum wage in Los Angeles, calling the move "anticompetitive" and another instance of intrusive government mandates. As mayor for the last four years he has stressed law and order; though he has failed to meet a 1993 goal of adding 3,000 police, the total number of officers is up. Riordan has been quick to take credit for a decline in violent crime in Los Angeles, though that drop-off mirrors national trends. When pressed to point to measures that have benefited poor and minority citizens during his tenure, Riordan cites this increase in safety.

Hayden, a state senator, has endorsed a living-wage ordinance, calling it a simple matter of social justice, and has condemned the pro-growth economic development strategy of Riordan. Hayden claims these policies have benefited the affluent periphery of the city at the expense of its poor and minority citizens. He is critical of the political/commercial establishment he believes controls City Hall. He has lambasted the culture of backroom deal-making he sees as characteristic of Riordan's term, and has promised to conduct city business out in the open. He has charged Riordan and his allies with ethical and financial improprieties, though Riordan takes only $1 a year in salary from the city. Hayden has called for an inner-city jobs program, stronger environmental protection, and revitalized public schools.

Riordan, a believer in private solutions to public problems, has brought his considerable personal fortune to bear on city needs. His personal sponsorship reopened the Eastside Boys and Girls Club and funded the Puente Learning Center. When a teacher was shot last year by a stray bullet, Riordan paid to bulletproof the glass in the school. Hayden sneers at Riordan's charitable endeavors, suggesting that the mayor is trying to "buy his way into heaven." Instead, Hayden advocates government action to tackle the systemic roots of inadequate community resources and gang violence. Charity, Hayden contends, is no substitute for justice.

The foregoing suggests that Riordan and Hayden split along classic conservative/liberal fault lines. This characterization founders, however, when it comes to one of the chief differences between the two: the locus of power.

Riordan has opposed the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and the secession of the San Fernando Valley from the City of Los Angeles; Hayden has indicated a willingness to accept both moves under certain conditions. Riordan has made a city-charter reform effort the centerpiece of his reelection bid, the effect of which would be to concentrate greater power in the mayor's office. Hayden has opposed charter reform but has advocated a network of neighborhood councils with real power over zoning, policing, and economic development, possibly the most radical decentralization plan ever advanced in Los Angeles by a candidate for mayor. Riordan, the conservative, thus seems to support more government; Hayden, the liberal, appears to want less. What accounts for this anomaly?

Their experience of Catholicism may throw some light on the question. Riordan has remained a "church Catholic," despite personal strains in his status. Prior to his election as mayor, he served as head of Cardinal Roger Mahony's finance council and led a foundation which raised almost $100 million for Catholic schools. Even with his prochoice stand on abortion and his two divorces, Riordan has maintained close ties with Mahony and the institutional church. He believes that, however imperfect, the church stands for truth in a world threatened by relativism, and the church commands his loyalty.

Hayden has no such loyalty to the institution. As a young man, Hayden was an altar boy in the suburban Detroit parish of Charles Coughlin, the anti-Roosevelt, profascist "radio priest" of the 1930s and '40s. Having worshiped at the altar of American Catholic anticommunism, Hayden later witnessed what he regarded as the bankruptcy of that world view in the rice fields of Vietnam. "Thank God for priests like the Berrigans, but there were too many like Spellman," he has said, explaining that it was Vietnam that broke him loose from allegiance to the hierarchy.

Today, Hayden has trouble convincing people he is really a Catholic. He regards himself as one, but sees Catholicism as but one point of entry into the spiritual universe. (At his most recent wedding, to actress Barbara Williams, a native American shaman officiated). His book, The Lost Gospel of the Earth (Sierra Club Books), mines various religious traditions for insights into the sacredness of the earth. "To be involved only in that part of the variety that is you and your kind is to miss the fantastic cosmic unity, which is the revelation of the presence of God," Hayden has said. His personal saints are Francis of Assisi, Thoreau, and Crazy Horse. He calls this "Catholicism with a universal emphasis," arguing that hierarchies that insist upon "one right way" of relating to God are the foremost threat to peace in the world today.

Riordan sees the need for authority to uphold truth; Hayden is suspicious of those who cloak class and organizational interests in spiritual dress. This difference may help to account for the political enigma described above. While generally conservative, Riordan believes in legitimate authority, whether it's law enforcement or a strong role for the mayor. Hayden has a deep skepticism about authority and believes that truth is better served when people are free to call their own shots. Just as Riordan does not always share the neo-conservative critique of centralization, Hayden is not always an advocate of traditional liberal statism.

The contrast between Riordan and Hayden offers evidence of how people raised in the Catholic tradition are influenced by it, even when they reject it. No matter who wins the mayoral election in Los Angeles, the city of angels will be led by someone who has wrestled with the Catholic experience.

John L. Allen, Jr., is a free-lance writer from Sherman Oaks, California.

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