[img]1881|right|Mr. Bradley||no_popup[/img]Dateline Compton – Before runnerup mayoral candidate Omar Bradley discussed his future professional plans following Tuesday night’s wide loss in the runoff, he turned to the personal side – the District Attorney’s long-presumed intention to re-try him on corruption charges, a conviction overturned last year.
“There still is the impending, or non-impending, case,” he said of the charge involving $7,500 supposedly spent on his own enhancement.
Zeroing in, candidly, on the real reason he believes charges were brought against him a decade ago, he says:
“I think the case was based on my relevance as a politician, which has diminished somewhat” since he lost the runoff 64 percent to 36 percent to new mayor Aja Brown.
He cannot plan until he knows what first-year DA Jackie Lacey’s office intends.
“I have got to see what they want to do,” since rumors have floated that the DA intended to indict Mr. Bradley days after this week’s results.
“I don’t think I am relevant today to South Bay politics,” reiterating why he believes the downtown office will back away from the long simmering case.
“The other side of that,” Mr. Bradley told the newspaper, “is that once I get done with that, I would like to go back to teaching school, maybe even teaching on a college level, and writing, too. That is a great love of mine.
“And I also like broadcast journalism. That is something I did many years ago in college, at Long Beach State. I was a radio and television communications major.”
In explaining Tuesday night’s setback, Mr. Bradley, the far better known candidate, cited two prickly causes.
“An enormous amount of money was spent for Ms. Brown (by downtown Los Angeles and labor union interests),” he said. “And overwhelming pressure was placed on local politicians to support her candidacy – or else.”
