First in a series
[img]1962|exact|||no_popup[/img]
Dateline Compton – A groundswell is said to be building to challenge the outcome of the mayoral election three weeks ago when a contender with pygmy-sized credentials but stunningly massive backing scored a nearly 2-to-1 victory over comebacking Omar Bradley, probably the community’s best-known personality.
Along the way, he detonated a bombshell about the final direct link in public life to the late revered County Supervisor Kenny Hahn, his daughter, U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-San Pedro/Long Beach).
Two other arresting developments also are competing for the busy minister Bradley’s attention as the summer season says hello:
• Two weeks before the June 4 runoff with now new Mayor Aja Brown, Mr. Bradley suffered a heart attack, and since then he has been wearing a groove in the pavement between his pin-neat home and the hospital.
• Most nagging of all, perhaps, is a sticky legal monster that refuses to die, ricocheting between the background and the foreground. It seems permanently embedded in his life. A deathless corruption accusation by the District Attorney’s office has haunted him for more than a decade. Just, he says, as his political enemies planned. He was back in court as recently as a week ago this morning – naturally without denouement. He is due back there in September to face two misdemeanor charges.
Never Again?
The D.A.’s goal, Mr. Bradley tells the newspaper, is to prevent the 2½-term former mayor from ever holding office in a hometown that he loves.
Ever upbeat and teeth-grittingly determined, “the good news,” says Mr. Bradley, “is that we know what the charges are, two misdemeanor counts of what they call conflict-of-interest.”
Studying his round face and shaved head, fist-doubling frustration is an inexorable passenger in his every word when he anguishingly relates his misadventures with the D.A.’s office, where longtime aide Jackie Lacey won election last November to succeed the retired Steve Cooley.
“But they are lying so hard…they are lying…i don’t even understand.”
Mr.Bradley believes he has a case for his side.
“When I come back to court in September, they are going to charge me with two misdemeanors, and I am going to have a preliminary hearing. You don’t have a preliminary hearing on misdemeanors. The reason for a preliminary hearing in the case of a felony is that you are going to be bound over for trial. What am I having a preliminary hearing for.
“Second, the misdemeanors they are charging me with happened 15 years ago. What about a statute of limitations?
“Yes, 15 years ago.
Enter Hahn
“They have used this as a means to justify in the minds of the people ‘why you shouldn’t vote for Omar.’
“But it didn’t work,” said the man who officially drew almost 1800 fewer votes than Ms. Brown (2360 to 4143) in the runoff.”
The intrigue began to build.
[img]1964|right|Ms. Hahn||no_popup[/img]“Janice Hahn called me on the telephone,” Mr. Bradley said, “the first time I heard from her since she became a Congresswoman.
“My mother was a good friend of her father’s, a loyal supporter. When I say ‘loyal,’ I mean loyal. Mr. Hahn’s picture was in my mother’s kitchen, next to Jesus and Martin Luther King.
“So Janice Hahn called me and said, ‘Omar, we have tested it out, and your support is very strong. But,’ she said, ‘they are making me endorse Aja Brown.’
“I wanted to say, ‘Who are they?’ But that is not a proper political question from one politician to another.
“Now,” said Mr. Bradley over the weekend, “I know who ‘they’ are.”
(To be continued)
