BRADLEY USHERED IN A NEW ERA.

Byline: EARL O. HUTCHINSON

I still remember the intense excitement of many African-Americans in Los Angeles in 1969 when City Councilman Tom Bradley announced that he would challenge longtime incumbent Sam Yorty for mayor. Yorty, a onetime liberal Democrat, it appeared, had long since abandoned his fledgling progressive politics to become a conservative shoot-from-the-hip politician whose kneejerk defense of the controversial policies of the Los Angeles Police Department had infuriated many blacks and Latinos.

Bradley represented the new wave of emerging black political power that promised to end decades of white political domination in America's big cities. Although Bradley lost his initial bid for mayor when Yorty indulged in a hard-hitting campaign that openly played on white fears of black political control, it was clear that Bradley was part of an irresistible political tide that could not be stopped.

Four years later Bradley won a smashing victory that started a trend that would see dozens of black mayors elected in the nation's major cities during the 1970s. But unlike in many of the cities that elected black mayors, blacks in L.A. were not, and would not be, the majority of the population. They were only one of the city's vast patchwork of ethnic groups. Also, economic power in the city still firmly rested in the hands of the aerospace, banking, real estate and manufacturing interests.

Bradley was able to win, and maintain office, for a record five terms by successfully forging a loose, and oftentimes, uneasy coalition of liberal Jews, blacks, Latinos, Asians, white conservatives and labor unions. But Bradley walked a political tightrope between these wildly disparate and often conflicting groups. He was criticized by labor, African-Americans and Latinos for giving too much away to the downtown business interests, i.e. the banks, corporations and developers, and doing too little to halt the abusive practices of the LAPD.

He was criticized by conservatives for aggressively seeking and bringing more women and minorities into city government. When L.A. exploded in 1992 following the acquittal of the four LAPD officers involved in the beating of Rodney King, Bradley was blamed for doing little to halt the city's dangerous racial polarization. By then Bradley appeared to be an aging, ineffectual politician badly out of touch with the times.

There were many public accolades for him, but few private regrets, when he announced that he would not seek another term in 1993. His successor, Richard Riordan, a conservative Republican, rode into office pledging fiscal conservatism and an end to the city's racial polarization. He seemed to fit better within the spirit of the political times.

What is one, then, to make of the Bradley legacy? Judging from the avalanche of public tributes and praise, Bradley will be remembered as a man whose political triumphs outweighed his failures. Perhaps this is the way it should be.

Even if the vision of political change that he dangled before us became badly blurred, the fact that he offered it was and is worth something.