Richard Riordan Looks Back On His Tenure As L.A. Mayor

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Richard Riordan, Los Angeles' former mayor, is looking back on his eight-year tenure in City Hall in a new book titled "The Mayor."

In a telling interview with KCAL9's Dave Bryan on Monday, Riordan says former President Ronald Reagan was his "secret weapon" when he ran for the post back in 1993.

"He was my adviser on what to do when I was running for mayor. You know what the main thing he told me was? To have people like you and to show that you like them," he explained.

But as a young boy growing up in New York, Riordan says he hadn't thought about a career in politics. Rather, he wanted to be another Lou Gehrig.

However, neither baseball nor football worked out too well.

And when Riordan succeeded Tom Bradley as L.A.'s first Republican mayor in three decades, the city was mired in problems, including rising crime and increasing racial tensions in the aftermath of the Rodney King case and the riots that followed.

And just six months after he took office came the destructive Northridge earthquake.

"The morning after the earthquake, I met with Governor Pete Wilson and two people from President Clinton's staff and the heads of transportation for the state," he said. "I just dragged everybody to a room about the size of a closet and I said, 'We are going to take this away from the state. We're going to put our architects and engineers out there this afternoon. We're gonna have a contract by this weekend to get it done,' " he recalled.

He explained, "We did it, and we got done in two months what it took San Francisco 15 years to get done after the Loma Prieta earthquake."

In the book, Riordan also talks about the pain and tragedy in his personal life. Most devastating were the deaths of two of his five children at early ages.

"Anybody that has lost a child, they know the impact of that," he said. "My son was killed scuba diving when he was 21. And my daughter died of a heart attack when she was 18. And it's like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer."

Riordan, who ran with the slogan, "Tough Enough to Turn L.A. Around," says his greatest achievement as mayor was imbuing L.A. neighborhoods with a sense of empowerment.

"I went to this really poor neighborhood in South L.A. and they were made at me when I first got there and said, 'What are you going to do about the broken sidewalks, the holes in the streets, the graffiti?' My response was, 'Nothing. I'm not going to do anything. You are going to do something.'"

Riordan said that he was invited back to the area six months later.

"They were so proud of what they did. The place was spotless," he said.

Bryan also asked Riordan if there are any personal secrets in the book that might surprise Angelenos.

"I told about how I cheated on my first wife. How wonderful she is to me today. She somebody who only remembers the good things about me," he explained.

Riordan is expected to embark on a book tour on Tuesday in downtown L.A.