Jimmy for Mayor

Congressman Jimmy Roosevelt wants to be mayor of Los Angeles--and in his campaign for election in the municipal primary on April 6, he is giving almost as good as he gets from Incumbent Sam Yorty, one of the least rascible men in U.S. political life. A sample Roosevelt-Yorty exchange last week:

Roosevelt: I have charged the present administration with government by tantrum because, among other reasons, its actions and decisions, affecting every citizen of our city, often seem to be arrived at on the spur of the moment and with the taint of political expediency. It is as if the mayor of the moment, after four years of junketing and bickering, has finally realized he needs to present a record to the voters.

Yorty: He has come to the end of the line in Washington. And maybe he thinks he will change his luck back here. But you know, he has a carpetbag filled with empty promises.

Los Angeles' mayoralty elections are nonpartisan, and while Jimmy, 57, is a liberal Democrat and Yorty, 55, is a conservative Democrat, ideology is not playing much of a part in their campaign. Rather, the race is more an extension of the longstanding feud between Democratic Governor Pat Brown and Democratic Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh. Roosevelt has charged that there is a "sinister alliance between the political machines of Big Daddy [Unruh] and Little Daddy [Yorty]" which "must be stopped and not allowed to take over city government, lock, stock and barrel." Yorty accuses Brown of helping Roosevelt. Brown denies it--sort of. "I have said time and time again that I intend to remain neutral in the race for mayor of Los Angeles," he says. "But I might add that Yorty is making it awfully difficult for me to do it." The Governor saves most of his critical energies for Unruh. Said he recently: "I have tried time and again to go along with that s.o.b., but things keep getting worse."

Roosevelt's name has brought the city's Negro and Jewish leaders flocking to support him. To counter that, Yorty recently embarked on a whirlwind courtship of Los Angeles' minority groups. In the space of five days, he lunched with the Independent Orthodox Rabbis, had cocktails with leaders of the city's Mexican community, dined with the local Chamber of Commerce in Chinatown, introduced Martin Luther King Jr. at a World Affairs Council luncheon, attended a reception of Hungarian community leaders, and planned to appear at a dinner honoring Cardinal Mclntyre.

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