Mayors

Foreign ambassadors stop by his office to talk international affairs. C-SPAN cameras catch him maneuvering legislation through Congress. The White House invited him to a formal state dinner with the president of France. After nearly a decade and a half in the House of Representatives, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) has built a reputation as a skilled legislative tactician with a firm grasp of a range of issues and valuable contacts on both sides of the aisle.

Foreign ambassadors stop by his office to talk international affairs. C-SPAN cameras catch him maneuvering legislation through Congress. The White House invited him to a fancy state dinner with the president of France. After nearly a decade and a half in the House of Representatives, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) has built a reputation as a skilled legislative tactician with a firm grasp of a variety of issues and contacts on both sides of the aisle.

The declaration from the mayor of Los Angeles came early, before 7 a.m., and set the tone for what was being proclaimed "No Panty Monday." All of a sudden, the City of Angels became a rock 'n' roll paradise where traffic tickets could be exchanged for concert tickets, where panhandlers must be called "unaffiliated applicants for private-sector funds" and where two 911 operators got $100 raises just for saying their names on the radio.

Doctors on Saturday upgraded former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's condition to fair, saying he has improved steadily after suffering a stroke early Thursday and has regained some movement on his right side. Bradley wiggled his right foot and nodded yes or no to questions, though he has not yet spoken, Dr. Fred Alexander said at a morning news conference at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hollywood. "You ask him to squeeze your hand, he squeezes your hand," Alexander explained.

As the GOP prepares to make Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole its standard-bearer against President Clinton this fall, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is finding himself the man in the middle. A Republican occupying the top job in a heavily Democratic city, Riordan has used to good advantage the technically nonpartisan feature of the mayor's office and his highest-level connections on both sides of the political aisle.

Saying they hoped to usher in a new era of cooperation, Santa Monica city leaders have decided to split the post of mayor between members of the city's rival political factions. The City Council voted Tuesday night to divide the new two-year mayoral term so that representatives from Santa Monicans for Renters Rights and the Coalition for a Safe Santa Monica will each occupy the city's top job. City Councilwoman Pam O'Connor of the renters group was sworn in Tuesday as the new mayor.

Councilman Lou Lopez will keep his ceremonial post as mayor pro tem for another year, a development that led Councilman Bob Zemel, who has the same seniority as Lopez on the five-member panel, to allege that he was snubbed by the council majority. Zemel said he is not disappointed that he failed to be chosen for the post. "But what I'm disappointed in," he said, "is that Anaheim takes a giant step backward with petty politics rearing its ugly head."

In a move likely to change next spring's election for mayor of Los Angeles from a coronation to a cat fight, state Sen. Tom Hayden has decided to challenge incumbent Richard Riordan, several sources said Thursday.

Barry L. Denes, the city's new mayor, said this week that one of his main goals is to fix the streets. "We need to be more pro-active in addressing the street conditions of Villa Park," Denes said. Orange County's late 1994 bankruptcy "put us in a bad spot and made for a lean couple of years. . . . We couldn't devote the dollars to street repairs that we should have." Now that the county has recovered, he said, "it's time for us to become more aggressive in our street-maintenance program."