Model Mayor.

L.A. mayoral hopefuls should take a cue from Oakland's Jerry Brown 

As the hitherto slow-moving mayoral race begins to pick up steam, there's some need to find a standard by which to judge the candidates.

Given the rather lackluster denouement of the Riordan years, perhaps the best models can be found out of town.

Although some might yearn for a tough-minded bully like New York's Rudy Giuliani, who certainly has left his imprint on the Big Apple, perhaps a more enlightened and intriguing choice lies just a few hundred miles to the north in Oakland. Indeed, perhaps no major city in California, or perhaps America, has enjoyed such a rapid turnaround than the perennially depressed second city around the Bay.

Even more intriguing, the prime architect of Oakland's renaissance is a man, Jerry Brown, whose previous record as governor has been widely dissed by virtually all parts of California's political class. Brown -- aka "Governor Moonbeam" -- has been ridiculed not only by Republicans but disdained even at times by his former chief of staff, now Gov. Gray Davis, and his own sister, Kathleen, who as a gubernatorial candidate proclaimed herself a "different shade of Brown."

Yet if Kathleen had chosen to run for mayor of Los Angeles this year, she could have done worse than following her brother's lead. Under Jerry's tutelage, Oakland has emerged as a serious economic player in the Bay Area.

For one thing, the city and its environs during the 1990s was among the 10 fastest growing metros with a population over 1 million, in terms of high-tech employment.

Proximity to prosperity

The city itself, once a technological wasteland, is now home to more than 300 high-technology firms. To some extent, of course, Oakland is a beneficiary of its location. Surrounded by the densest concentration of high technology of any region in the world makes the city an ideal location for Silicon Valley-headquartered firms wishing to expand operations. Indeed, Oakland's downtown is becoming precisely the kind of high-tech haven that our bedraggled center city can only dream of becoming.

In fact, one place in Los Angeles that would benefit from Brown-style leadership would be downtown. Vacancy rates for top-quality office space in Oakland's downtown fell to about 3 percent this year, improved from about 12 percent in 1996.

Although the Bay Area economic boom has been a help, business people in Oakland leave few doubts that Mayor Brown, who took over as the city's mayor in June 1998, has driven the success. After all, the Bay Area boomed through much of the 1980s and mid-1990s, but Oakland consistently languished, impervious to economic stimulation.

"Five years ago, downtown (Oakland) was occupied by hostile forces," said real estate developer John Protopappas, who has acquired and refurbished several properties downtown. "What Jerry Brown is creating is an environment that has people walking around downtown with disposable income. He's been a visionary who deals well with the bureaucracy and has put the city on the map."

For his part, Mayor Brown sees Oakland's comeback as a result of a "learning experience" derived from the city's decade-long anti-business policies, which concentrated more on extracting benefits from companies in order to support a burgeoning social service industry.

Oakland city officials in former years "didn't do anything but show up," Brown pointed out.

City's role

What has been the key for Oakland? One key element has been Brown's focus, something that was not a striking characteristic of his "Moonbeam" years in Sacramento. In an interview recently, Brown was, remarkably candid about what cities can and can not do. They should, as we frequently hear from our left-leaning City Council members in Los Angeles, be seen primarily not as engines of income redistribution, but as economic entities that must find their niches in the global economy.

Cities, in other words, must compete, as people and companies do in a fundamentally capitalist world economy.

"What's the alternative to that approach -- socialism?" Brown asks. 'That doesn't have a lot of votes."

In Oakland, Brown has carried out his mission with a laser-like concentration on issues important to business and private-sector employees, like reducing crime, cleaning up the streets and improving city services. The former Gov. "Moonbeam" is now proud to be seen as Mayor "Pothole," the master not only of broad visions but also of minor details.

Perhaps the most telling, and significant, critical difference between Mayor Brown and his predecessors has been his attitude on public employees. Unlike our present L.A. City Council and public employee union pushovers such as mayoral aspirants Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn, Brown has stood up to the bureaucrats, the school teachers and the other public "servants" who used to rule the roost in Oakland in the bad old days.

Whenever Brown can skirt organized public employees to get a job done, one insider remarked, he does it.

Of course, all this has made Mayor Brown somewhat unpopular with many of his former friends on the left. As he has brought in business to the city, the usual social service-oriented critics have attacked him for promoting gentrification by actually boosting inner-city property values. Brown has a sharp retort for such muddled thinking. "A slum is not an icon of Oakland," he maintains.

Although some may see elitism in Brown's message, the voters of Oakland, including its large minority population, do not. He is now widely considered unbeatable politically.

Such dynamic leadership is exactly what business -- and the remnants of middle-class Los Angeles -- should demand of our next mayor. We need someone who, like Jerry Brown, is not going to spend his credibility trying to win pardons for drug-dealing sons of campaign contributors, try to turn City Hall into social service agency or workers' Soviet for public employees.

Will we find such a person? Right now, the prospects are not too promising. But if the aspiring next mayors are looking for inspiration, they might do well to look up north at a city that, once upon hard times, is finding out that strong leadership can really make a difference.

Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica. He is the author of "The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape."