The Bradley Challenge

It was no idle political pledge when Los Angeles Mayor Samuel Yorty threatened: "I haven't let loose on him yet." Yorty's target is City Councilman Thomas Bradley, 51, a black lawyer and former police lieutenant who had outdrawn the mayor 42% to 26% in the April 1 mayoral primary.-With a runoff election next week, Bradley has a sizable lead; a recent poll found voters lined up 52% for Bradley, 35% for Yorty. One result is that Yorty, 59, has been waging a desperate, often venomous campaign against Bradley.

Name Calling. Bradley's campaign style mirrors his own personality--low-key and detached. In the belief that Yorty is doing a good job of talking himself out of a third term, he has chosen for the most part not to be drawn into a name-calling contest. Instead, Bradley has addressed himself to such issues as federal aid to schools and especially to the need for stricter law enforcement. "I intend to work for the end of violence," he says, "so that once again that which unites us will be stronger than that which keeps us apart."

Bradley is a registered Democrat, like Yorty, but he has managed to pull together a broad coalition of backers that covers the political spectrum. Endorsements have come from Democrats Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, Republicans Charles Percy and Jacob Javits, and several top aides of California Governor Ronald Reagan. To win, Bradley knows that he must get a slice of Los Angeles' large conservative vote, an area that has been Yorty's exclusive bailiwick.

Yorty has denounced Bradley as dishonest, a Black Power advocate and an associate of radical leftists. He has gone so far as to charge Bradley, a former policeman, with being anti-law enforcement because of his criticism of the police department's community relations program. The mayor, while accusing his opponent of a racist approach, easily invokes the race issue himself. "In Los Angeles," he says, "you don't have the mayor fighting with the police department as they are in Cleveland, where they elected a Negro mayor." The Los Angeles Times, arch critic of the mayor, has been painstakingly restrained in covering the campaign. Lately, however, its editorial writers and cartoonists have taken to roasting Yorty. Said one cartoon caption: "Winner of the first annual 'little old lady in tennis shoes award' is Mayor Sam Yorty for his re-election campaign!"

Mostly Nameless. During a recent speech before "Pro America," a conservative women's club, Yorty said that Los Angeles is an "experimental area for the taking over of a city by a combination of bloc voting, Black Power, left-wing radicals and, if you please, identified Communists." The evil characters that Yorty has warned of remain mostly nameless. His Red menace in the Bradley camp amounts to a campaign coordinator, Don Rothenberg, who left the party in 1956. Since then, Rothenberg has worked for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential bid and in the losing campaign of Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who knew Rothenberg's background before hiring him. As for the idea of a Black Power takeover, most militants consider Bradley something of an Uncle Tom.

As the campaign draws to a finale, the Bradley camp believes that Yorty has overdone his scare campaign. The theory has considerable validity. One recent poll showed that 27% of those opposing Yorty base their stand on his noxious campaign strategy.

-In Los Angeles, the city charter calls for mayoral elections to be nonpartisan. The so-called mayoral primary is tantamount to a general election, which can be won by any candidate getting more than 50% of the vote.

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