Mayor's Race.

The battle lines are already drawn for next year's most important political fight: the search for Richard Riordan's replacement

IN local political circles, the real story of 2000 will not be played out until 2001.

It's L.A.'s mayoral contest, and while the vote is 15 months away - an eternity in politics - the jockeying already is underway to replace Mayor Richard Riordan. But the race for mayor represents far more than who will be running the city of Los Angeles. It will help determine the various coalitions that could govern L.A. well into the next century.

Already, four contenders have formally announced: City Attorney James Hahn, the son of former county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn; Steve Soboroff, a shopping-mall developer who now serves as a mayoral aide and chairs the school construction bond oversight committee; Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa; and City Councilman Joel Wachs.

U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, says he also plans to run but has yet to file campaign papers. And at least two others are weighing bids: County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and state Controller Kathleen Connell.

The race has gotten off to such an early start that Yaroslavsky's hesitancy is causing some of his supporters to back other candidates. It even cost him the support of one of the region's leading political power brokers, investment banker Bill Wardlaw, who is widely credited with engineering Riordan's two victories. Wardlaw recently decided to run Hahn's campaign, despite the fact that Riordan is supporting Soboroff.

"The fact that people are focusing on the mayor's race at this early stage says a lot about the ongoing debate over the future of L.A.," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, political science professor at Claremont Graduate School. "It's about what kind of leadership the city wants and also whether race, ethnicity or ideology will play a role in who the next mayor is."

Indeed, the coalition of Westside business leaders and Valley residents that brought Riordan to power is breaking up. The next year is likely to determine what new coalitions will form and what issues drive them. The battles are likely to be fought along ethnic, geographic and economic lines.

One probable alliance, which became visible in this year's municipal elections, is that of organized labor and Latinos. Unions have tapped into the huge Latino workforce, while Latino candidates have used the organizational power of labor to propel their campaigns. Their main issue is likely to be the widening gap between the rich and poor in L.A. and the push for living wage legislation.

Another force to be reckoned with is the growing activism in the San Fernando Valley, now in the midst of a campaign for secession. The criticism against City Hall was reflected just recently by the uproar caused by the City Council's decision to reopen a now-closed portion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill near Granada Hills.

Then there's the slow-growth movement taking hold once again on the Westside and other portions of the city, sparked by the resumption of development and ever-increasing traffic congestion.

"Slow-growth will become more of an issue in the campaign. It will crescendo throughout the year and really be a factor around election time," said Richard Lichtenstein, president of Marathon Communications, a local lobbying firm. "People are already starting to say enough is enough. And you will see it even more once the neighborhood councils (mandated by charter reform) take shape late next year.

Finally, there is education. Riordan has become actively involved in helping reform the badly tattered Los Angeles Unified School District by, among other things, supporting a slate of school board candidates. That could benefit Soboroff, who chairs the Proposition BB committee charged with overseeing $2 billion in school renovation funds. It could also aid Villaraigosa, a former school union leader and chief architect of a $9 billion state funding measure for schools.

Of course, with the election fully 15 months away, a lot can change. Just look back at the end of 1991; nobody at that point foresaw the riots that occurred four months later and totally altered the local electoral landscape. Just as important, only a few Angelenos had ever heard of Richard Riordan.