Absent a crisis, voters endorse status quo.

IF you believe the exit polls in last week's election, more than half the voters who bothered to show up feel that Los Angeles is moving in the wrong direction--what would normally spell curtains for incumbent Mayor James Hahn.

But it's really a trick question--certainly an incomplete one. What the Los Angeles Times really should have asked is whether the "mayor of Los Angeles, whoever it turns out to be, is in a position to correct the ills that have gotten the city off track in the first place.

Angelenos know the difference, which could explain why so few voters bothered to cast ballots and why much of the noise that's made up the last couple of months of campaigning has sounded vacant, implausible and downright silly.

Sorry Bob.

Better luck next time Bernie and Richard.

Thus, we are left with the coolest customers in the field--the charming if enigmatic Antonio Villaraigosa, whose strategy to run on smiles and generalities has worked beyond many expectations, and the phlegmatic mayor, who somehow saves his best performances for the campaign trail.

Not that you need me to state the obvious, but don't expect either of these guys to create mass transit networks and hire thousands of cops and attract dozens of Fortune 500 headquarters. There will be efforts at incremental improvements that are deemed doable--pothole patrols, a few more conventions, maybe even an NFL team.

The big ideas

The strange thing about this campaign is that while all the challengers talked about having the vision to carry out the big stuff, there was barely any mention of precisely how they would get it done. The sound bite era has reached the point where campaign lackeys don't even bother handing out position papers. Who would read them, first off, but more to the point, who would believe them?

Bob Hertzberg was the self-proclaimed candidate of BIG IDEAS, and in the end it might have been his undoing because, well, BIG IDEAS tend to make people EXTREMELY NERVOUS. Or haven't you ever had a new boss who sweeps in with crazy plans that you and your co-workers just know will blow up? And even if they aren't unmitigated disasters, they're often little different than the old way of doing things. It's the not-better-but-it's-mine school of management.

I got a twinge of this from Hertzberg when we asked him a while back what he would do to make L.A. a more attractive place to do business. He said his first priority was to find a replacement for the city's gross receipts tax--even if it meant changing state law.

Now, just to refresh everybody's memory, the business tax overhaul has just passed the City Council after years of debate and deferral. The thing has barely taken effect. So why would he want to suddenly scrap it and start over?

"It's all about leadership and working with people," he told us, adding that he would tell councilmembers: "I need certain tools when it comes to attracting business to this city. Here's my model--let me hear what you think of it."

Well, all right. Maybe Hertzberg's plan to have a net receipts tax based on net income, not net revenues, would have worked a bit better, but like his proposal to break up the L.A. Unified School District, it was wonkish overload for a city unaccustomed to messing with the system too much. On the last weekend of the campaign, I got the feeling that he was losing support every time he opened his mouth.

Richard Riordan got away with being a change agent in 1993 because the city was such a basket case--what with a recession and the riots and corporations moving out by the truckload. Voters were willing to roll the dice, although even Riordan, whose tenure is more fondly chronicled now than it was at the time, won a few but lost a few more.

City still works

This time, the mantra for activist government just doesn't connect--not only because it seems so out of reach but because for a certain portion of the electorate it's not all that necessary. The city is actually in pretty decent shape, with January unemployment at 6.5 percent, down from 7.1 percent a year earlier, and both commercial and residential development are blossoming downtown and in Hollywood. Unions are cutting deals with developers and a Convention Center hotel is finally in the works, to be part of the Staples expansion downtown.

There's plenty of bad stuff, too--horrendous traffic, lousy schools, a federal probe into the city's contracting policies--but Hertzberg, Bernard Parks and Richard Alarcon had the daunting task of convincing enough voters that it's bad enough to turn back the incumbent, something that almost never happens in Los Angeles.

At this point, it will come down to marshalling alliances, with Hahn reaching out to the business interests that had been pushing Hertzberg (that could be an interesting dance given Hahn's efforts during the primary to corral the labor vote). Villaraigosa is less reliant on the Hertzberg business crowd--they're really not his natural base, and besides, he has a much wider swath of support to choose from.

Villaraigosa vs. Hahn--in the end it's not likely to make much difference. The city will rise or fall on factors that are beyond the control of any mayor, which is one reason why turnout for the general election might even be lower than it was last week. And why, whichever man wins, the city will keep going along as it is. Not great, not awful, but at least going.

Is that acceptable? Not to Bob Hertzberg and his big ideas. But for the 214,000 or so Angelenos who voted for the runoff candidates--as well as the hundreds of thousands who didn't bother voting at all--functionality comes first.

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.