The Hall of Records, the stately — and formerly staid — home of the County Board of Supervisors, rocked with rip-snorting rhetoric for 90 minutes this afternoon when the premier political orator in Los Angeles, Mark Ridley-Thomas, took the oath of office as Supervisor from one of the piping hot political properties in the state, Kamala Harris, the charismatic district attorney of San Francisco.
Wasting no time fulfilling a critical campaign promise, Mr. Ridley-Thomas said that while a single Supervisor can’t move a pebble, together the Board can. With that, he declared he will stand in front of the closed King-Harbor Hospital at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning to announce his intentions.
With a deep bow to the most populous and most culturally diverse of the five Supervisorial districts, it is safe to say that of the many persons who stepped to the microphone to laud the new Supervisor — singing-performers, speaking-performers and military-performers — no single culture appeared to be repeated.
While the new Supervisor has his firebrand moments, both Mr. Ridley-Thomas and his presenters accented the deep intellectual dimension of his character and resume.
Change You Can See
Yes, said the former City Councilman who started the community-driven Empowerment Conference early in his first term, he is an agent of change. But he would be much less effective, and could scarcely achieve, without the intimate co-operation of community.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas constantly called for the unrelenting commitment of community involvement, referring to the people who elected him as “partners” rather than a mere listening post.
“I am calling for a new level of civil engagement,” he said, “what has been called intentional civility, for example, raising the civic IQ on the environment.”
Invoking numerous icons of the last half century, from Rosa Parks to Moms Mabley, Mr. Ridley-Thomas and his endorsers seemed determined to elevate the wildfire-like change theme of President-elect Obama’s campaign to a more erudite plateau.
Always with one unerring eye cast toward a wider niche with a historical bent, Mr. Ridley-Thomas noted that he was born the year Brown v. Board of Education, and just 13 months before Ms. Parks became the most famous black woman — perhaps of any culture — in American transportation history.
Ethicist with Clean Hands
Several references to the uniqueness of the Supervisor’s doctorate in social ethics from USC seemed intended to convey two messages, that the new leader of the District was about the smartest person in the room and, as an ethicist, he would always operate with transparent and clean hands.
After spending the last six years in the state Legislature in Sacramento, Mr. Ridley-Thomas, freshly turned 54 years old, has retturned to the only home where his heart is, Los Angeles.
This is where he started out nearly 30 years ago, as director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he remained for a decade before jumping to the Los Angeles City Council for the decade of the ‘90s, and on into the turn of the century.
Now Mr. Ridley-Thomas, who always was more comfortable within the familiar confines of his hometown, has apparently crowned his career with not only a job he said he always wanted but possibly the final elective office of his career, even if he is still a political young man.
This Is the End
At least staying-put has been the history of the ladies and gentlemen voted onto the County Board of Supervisors. Retirement traditionally has been their next stop.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas will go into the Los Angeles County record books as the first black man elected to the Board of Sups — by a huge margin — just as his now-retired predecessor, four-term Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, was the first black woman voted onto the Board.
Even though Ms. Brathwaite Burke rather loudly campaigned for his opponent, City Councilman Bernard Parks, Mr. Ridley-Thomas paid tribute to her and pointedly asked the partisan audience to vigorously salute her.
In Sacramento, Mr. Ridley-Thomas nearly was as far away from the limelight as Los Angeles is removed from the capital. State senators and Assembly members traditionally are details in Los Angeles media coverage. And now the matured Mr. Ridley-Thomas, at or near the crest of his influence, is positioned to become a full-blown star. Journalists, electronic and print, pay far more attention to 500 W. Temple St. than anything going on in Sacramento, except for the Governor’s office.
With a swirl of stentorianism, Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s swearing-in evolved from a modest little ceremony into a hurricane of hosannahs and hurrahs.
More of a pep rally than an indoor political picnic.
Soaring Oratory
Between Supervisor Ridley-Thomas and the second-most rousing speaker in Los Angeles, one of his principal patrons, Maria Elena Durazo, head of the County Federation of Labor, the packed and perspiring auditorium nearly pulled loose from its moorings.
Ms. Durazo, who concedes no rhetorical quarter to the Supervisor at the podium, was credited with perhaps the heaviest role in the Ridley-Thomas campaign by daily mobilizing thousands of union members to go door-to-door and by channeling millions into the new Supervisor’s coffers.
Speaking for the least-noticed members of the Los Angeles County workforce, Ms. Durazo over and over urged the crowd to ceiling-heights with an unsubtle message that the new Supervisor would improve their prospects.
“We will stop the Wal-Marts from sending jobs overseas,” was a typical Durazo line that sparked a thundering ovation that nearly busted the sound barrier.
Cheer, Cheer for New Supervisor
The spirited, fan-waving crowd of stimulated fans stood and they cheered as if they all were related.
They responded to repeated, rhythmic exhortations from the new Supervisor, as in:
“We are the 2nd Supervisorial District and together we are the keys to change.”
Three times Mr. Ridley-Thomas shouted the exhortation, and three times it bounced back to him.
It was almost as if Mr. Ridley-Thomas were the coach and he was warming up the Coliseum crowd as the Trojan players from his alma mater, USC, were getting ready to explode out of the tunnel and onto the field.
Together, Mr. Ridley-Thomas and Ms. Durazo left the excited crowd nearly breathless before adjourning to the Disney Concert Hall for dessert.
No Smiles Allowed
Meanwhile, the dullest show in town played out in the background. Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, Gloria Molina and new Chair Don Knabe were alternately distracted and slumped deep in their seats — as if their parents had forced them to make an appearance. At that, they were ahead of Suopervisor Mike Antonovich, re-elected last month and sworn-in an hour before the Ridley-Thomas ceremony. His empty chair stood in for him.
