Popular Appeal.

EVEN compared to the poor choice given voters in last week's presidential race, the offerings for our next major election, that for mayor of Los Angeles, seem dismal.

With only a few months before the first round of voting in what could be a pivotal election, none of the candidates has shown much more than a narrow appeal to a very fragmented electorate.

This disturbing prospect, insiders tell me, has led a small group of influential entertainment, corporate and legal figures to push the candidacy of a totally new and unexpected candidate: former State Treasurer Kathleen Brown. The attractive and articulate daughter of the beloved former Governor Pat Brown, and sister to the redoubtable Jerry, Kathleen is being pressured to run as the one candidate who can pull together an increasingly disintegrated civic culture.

Yet it is not so much the Brown legacy that is being evoked by these moves, but that of former Mayor Tom Bradley. What these insiders, who reportedly include former District Attorney Ira Reiner, are trying to fill is what one principal calls "the Bradley quotient," a figure who can appeal to the disparate elements in the Los Angeles electorate.

The sense of urgency about Brown's candidacy is being driven by what now appears to be the final unraveling of the Riordan years -- epitomized by the Rampart scandal, the stranglehold of public employee unions on the City Council, the Council's seeming breakneck lurch to the loony left and the growing power of secessionist movements throughout the city.

"These are Bradley Democrats," noted one Brown booster. "They want someone whose voice will be heard and who no community will dismiss out of hand. They are looking for a coalition builder and they see Kathleen as a potential assembler of that coalition."

Bradley, before his last two terms, at least, was an effective mayor who put together a new kind of coalition in Los Angeles, spanning the liberal, labor, Jewish, African-American and corporate communities. Under Bradley, the city of Los Angeles appeared not dysfunctional, but progressive in the best sense, appealing to both business and labor while also trying to address the needs of long-excluded ethnic communities.

None of the current candidates, according to a participant at a dinner where the Brown-for-mayor idea was a central topic, is seen as remotely filling this "quotient." Right now we have a lot of candidates, none of whom is likely to win more than 25 percent of the vote. The strategy of the existing candidates seems to be not to unite the city by building a strong coalition, but to find a way to sneak by the first round and then beat an even more unattractive opponent in the second.

Is there any hope that someone will emerge from this pack? Among some in this group, there had been hope that Antonio Villaraigosa might emerge as this kind of figure -- a kind of Latino Bradley.

But so far Villaraigosa, an enormously engaging person and a clever politician, has done little to allay fears that he remains, at base, largely a product of the labor and Chicano movements that spawned him in the first place. He has not made the transition -- despite his impressive coalition building, in Sacramento -- that Bradley made as he went from South L.A. councilman to mayor. His support for strikers during the MTA strike and his close ties to Labor Federation leader Miguel Contreras has raised doubts among the critical corporate leadership that was at the core of the Bradley coalition.

Although not Latino, Brown would undermine Villaraigosa's base. She is a Catholic and she took the political hits of opposing Proposition 187 in 1994. The Brown links to organized labor, particularly on the private-sector side, are very strong and old.

The other would-be mayors are, if anything, seen as even more vulnerable to a Brown challenge. Xavier Becerra's campaign seems mostly there to keep Villaraigosa from making it. Joel Wachs' campaign has become somewhat of a mystery, with no real focus and apparent direction. Steve Soboroff is well-regarded and respected in business circles but, despite his exemplary record of public efforts to help the neglected communities, has yet to demonstrate palpable appeal elsewhere.

The prospect of James Hahn as mayor is particularly worrisome, to these influentials. They see. him as an ultimate empty suit, who would be little more than a tool for master manipulator Pasadena lawyer Bill Wardlaw. A Hahn mayoralty would essentially hand the keys to a coalition of public employee unions and well-connected developers. It's hard to see him doing anything but spurring further moves to secession.

For her part, Kathleen Connell is seen as a one-issue candidate -- "I'm a woman" -- whose rationale would dissolve if Brown entered the race. But there lies the rub. Does Kathleen Brown want to run and, if she did, does she have the right elements to make it work?

On the latter question, it is clear that Kathleen Brown is bright and charismatic enough to rush past the current crop of candidates. Hopefully, she will not make a disastrous choice of campaign manager. In her 1994 run for governor, she let the awful Clint Riley drive her candidacy into the ground with a negative, depressing and ultimately stupid strategy that made dour Pete Wilson seem like an upbeat figure. Kathleen needs to listen to her own counsel and let people sense her intellect, her optimism and good character.

But none of this will matter if she decides not to run and leaves the city to its current pack of aspirants. Insiders say her husband, the very substantial Van Gordon Sauter, is not anxious to suffer through another political race. And perhaps Brown herself will not have the stomach for it.

But for my part, I hope she at least considers making the run. Los Angeles is still a great city and it deserves something more in the way of leadership than what now appears on its horizon.

Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and research fellow at the Reason Public Policy Institute. He can be reached at [e-mail].