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DAILY BREEZE PROFILE: MAYOR HAHN
Wednesday February 16, 2005Incumbent L.A. mayor digs in for tough election battle
By David Zahniser
Copley News Service
The voice tightened. Suddenly it went lower, much lower than normal for the usually staid mayor of the nation's second-largest city. With a vein in his neck throbbing, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn started punching out his words.
"That's the kind of arrogance," Hahn declared, spitting out the last three syllables in a single growl, "that people are getting tired of."
Hahn, a 24-year political veteran, was voicing his disappointment over the City Council's decision to reject his latest plan for hiring 1,000 more police officers -- a half-cent, citywide sales-tax ballot measure.
But the atmosphere in the room was like so many other Hahn moments: responding to a group of black ministers furious over the removal of an African-American police chief; being bawled out by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky over San Fernando Valley secession; answering unpleasant questions about an expanding federal corruption probe of City Hall.
Since he took office in 2001, Hahn has been buffeted by investigations and hammered over his policies. As he runs for a second and final term in the March 8 election, two questions loom over him: Is he a mayor or a punching bag? And if, indeed, he has been battered over the past four years, are those wounds self-inflicted?
Wolfing down pancakes in a hopping San Pedro diner, while Los Angeles school board member Mike Lansing ate at a nearby counter and four neighborhood council leaders sat in an adjacent booth, Hahn conceded that his term "wasn't dull." But he dismissed the idea that he is, in any way, a whipping boy.
"It certainly wasn't an easy first term," he said. "But I'm proud of the way I met those challenges."
To read more, visit http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1269072.html