RIORDAN'S SUPPORT PAYS OFF AT LONG LAST.

Byline: ERIC MOSES 

MAYOR Richard Riordan is no E.F. Hutton.

When the mayor talked about how to vote in local elections, people rarely listened - at least until now.

Until what could be a sweep of his reform-minded slate of school board candidates Tuesday, a political pat on the back from the popular mayor was deadly to others' campaigns.

One of his first forays into the political endorsement game as mayor was shot down in 1995 when voters said no to his choice of Barbara Yaroslavsky to succeed her husband, Zev, on the City Council after he was elected to the county Board of Supervisors.

They rejected the Republican mayor's suggestion so resoundingly that they elected the ultra-liberal Mike Feuer.

Riordan tried to learn from that experience and may have realized the best way to get involved in elections was to do for others what he had done to get himself elected against long odds: put together bigger campaign war chests than everybody else.

The practice didn't work at first. He and close allies would invest in campaigns only to see voters choose the other candidates.

Take the April 1997 city election.

Television campaign ads touted the tag team of Riordan and Ted Stein, who - with considerable backing from the mayor and his political mentor, William Wardlaw - was running for city attorney, to restore law and order to the city. Riordan got 62 percent of the vote, but his ``running mate'' was trounced, garnering just 39 percent.

Need further evidence? In that same election, Riordan got voters to create an elected panel to rewrite the outdated City Charter (all in an effort to make the Mayor's Office more powerful), but in the same punch of the ballot card voters rejected most of the candidates the mayor supported.

But that election was a turning point for Riordan. What he said during that campaign and during his inauguration speech may have turned the city to his side.

He has governed the city from recession to prosperity. He has gotten a stagnant and decaying city moving again. He has overseen the revival of the city from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

More than that, though, he has followed through on many public safety programs. He hasn't added 3,000 cops to the streets as he promised in 1993, but he has boosted the Police Department's ranks and image, and has turned the spotlight on the public school system, even though he has no control over it.

Beating those drums over and over generated some credibility for himself. Though he still flubs a line or two in speeches, he is no longer looked upon by the electorate as someone in way over his head.

People outside City Hall generally like him because he never gets angry in public, and perhaps because he doesn't have the power other big city mayors have he's not looked upon as a dictator as many New Yorkers view their mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.

All this came together on Tuesday.

He used his fund-raising skills and contacts to generate $2 million to dump into school board campaigns and get Los Angeles residents to vote for his slate of reformers. Three won outright; another faces a runoff in June.

His picks for the vacant City Council seats in the northeast San Fernando Valley and on the Eastside collected the most votes in their respective races, though they face runoffs as well.

Amid those triumphs was one big bomb: failure of the $744 million police and fire facilities bond.

Even Riordan's growing coattails and political skill couldn't save that one. And the question is whether he will be able to save City Charter reform on the June ballot.

It won't be easy.

There are grumblings in the Valley that the proposed charter fails to effectively change the way City Hall operates and fails to give them the say in government that they want and that they claim only secession will.

It may face opposition or considerable nonsupport from several City Council members who would rather be endorsed by Riordan than cede any ground in the power struggle with the Mayor's Office.

Voter turnout could be especially low. With four contested races for school board, two for City Council and a citywide bond measure on Tuesday's ballot, just 17 percent of registered voters bothered to go to the polls. With fewer items of interest on the June ballot, turnout could dip to a single digit.

And if ever there was a dull issue, it's charter reform.

Few people in this city of 3.6 million know what's really in the new document.

``For the voters, this is coming out of nowhere,'' said Bill Carrick, a political consultant who ran the school board elections for Riordan and intends to work on the charter reform campaign.

The proponents need to run a highly effective educational campaign in order to overcome the general voter malaise and the no votes from those who will vote against all city initiatives or those who just don't understand it.

Carrick says Riordan is the key to the charter's passage. And political consultant Joe Cerrell agrees.

``He's got to turn it into a crusade, and he has to be convinced that his reputation rises or falls with this thing,'' Cerrell said. ``(At least) that's what (his aides) have to convince him of.''

Riordan's legacy is unlikely to hinge on the success or failure of charter reform - and may already be written based on his school board overhaul - but the city's legacy might.

Although his headlong endorsement and financial interest in the campaign ultimately will determine whether Riordan's coat has tails.