Even though Bernard Parks has competed for more offices than even career politicians since being ousted after one term as chief of the LAPD, he never has seemed comfortable in a candidate’s role.
Too dapper. Too button-down. Too Board Room.
The Los Angeles City Councilman definitely is not the type who can accept getting his hands dirty. Or getting down with the guys.
He would rather take a position on the end of the couch and watch from a distance.
He made one of his infrequent charges against his latest opponent in his latest run for office, as reported in the morning newspapers — and that will be explained shortly.
Coming from Mr. Parks, the passive-sounding charge came off so reductively, feeling like an afterthought, as if it were an outtake from a 1930s movie featuring one of those officious, veddy British-speaking chaps wearing a tweedy jacket and a monocle in one eye.
“I say, excuse me, dear boy, but after tea and before crumpets, would you be good enough, if you have the time, of course, to jot down an accusation I am about to level?”
Sometimes he reminds you of a refined gentleman who would say “Sure” when asked to drop down to school for a game of hoops, only to show up sporting a walking cane, a splendid suit, crisply ironed white shirt and necktie, and possibly even wearing a fedora, all the while asking, “Who’s got the ball?”
The image and the rhetoric don’t scan. The hole is square. he peg is circular.
Resume of a Warrior
Mr. Parks’s opponent for retiring Yvonne Brathwaite Burke’s seat on the County Board of Supervisors, state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City), if anything, is more dapper, more button-down than Mr. Parks.
But, oh, how he loves to mix it up — and still does not leave any dirt beneath his fingernails.
Politics is his life, happily, gleefully, running down the middle aisle of his of his energetic, constantly churning bloodstream.
Awaken him from a sound sleep at 3 in the morning six months after he wins — if he wins — the Nov. 4 runoff election against Mr. Parks, and the senator will deliver an address that will sound as if it should be emailed to Gettysburg and intoned by Mr. Lincoln.
Ham, Eggs and Speechmaking
Standing on the floor of the state Senate in Sacrament, he could order breakfast from a passing waiter, and his locution would ring with such elegance that colleagues could not tell whether it was part of the speech or what he was about to dine on.
One wonders how carefully Mr. Parks has been paying attention to the volley of charges aimed at him this summer and autumn by Sen. Ridley-Thomas.
The senator knows how to make accusations stick — by pasting thick glue on both sides of the charges.
The Ridley-Thomas accusations against Mr. Parks have been intensely personal, as the latest one was, while Mr. Parks’s retorts have been more amorphous, as the latest one was.
Personally Speaking
When the Ridley-Thomas campaign charged Mr. Parks this week with long-term membership in “an extreme far right” political party, they produced supporting documents accompanied by insistent, convicting language. The accusation stuck, and Mr. Parks, softly, reluctantly, acknowledged it with a caveat that was uttered flabbily.
Feeling the urge to respond in kind, Mr. Parks, acting unilaterally as a City Councilman, issued a 60-day eviction notice the other day to SCOPE, Strategic Concepts of Organizing and Policy Education, a non-profit group that supports Sen. Ridley-Thomas.
For the past eight years, SCOPE has been paying virtually no rent to lease a former fire station at 1715 Florence Ave., South Los Angeles, and among other activities the group is trying to get the senator elected to the Board of Supervisors.
“This is something that is totally inappropriate,” Mr. Parks told the Daily News. “I don’t think that’s why we give you a building, for you to set up for a candidate of your choice and run a campaign out of it.”
Time to Intervene
When word seeped out, Mayor Villaraigosa, who has his own ties to SCOPE to protect, intervened.
As more or less the CEO of Los Angeles, not to mention a politician with a keen eye for publicity and well-timed political strategy, rescinded the eviction notice.
Apparently, the ultimate result will be played out among the full City Council.