The investor who led L.A. through tumult

Richard Riordan set the mold for the businessman-turnedpolitician. A wealthy investor who contributed $6 million of his own money to his campaign, the moderate Republican was a political novice when he became mayor of Los Angeles in 1993. With the city reeling from riots over the police beating of unarmed Black motorist Rodney King, he ran on the slogan “Tough enough to turn L.A. around.” During his two terms, crime dropped and the local economy rebounded, but Riordan struggled to navigate the city’s bureaucracy and clashed with local Black leaders. Still, his can-do approach paid off after the 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged the vital Santa Monica Freeway. Riordan promised contractors a $200,000 bonus for each day they finished ahead of schedule, and the work was done 74 days early. “This demonstrates what can happen when private-sector innovation and market incentives replace business as usual,” Riordan said.

Riordan was born in New York City to a department store executive father and a mother who worked for nonprofits, said The Washington Post. After attending Santa Clara University on a football scholarship, he transferred to Princeton University, then served in the Army during the Korean War before graduating from University of Michigan Law School. He joined a law firm in L.A., and after inheriting $80,000, he invested in real estate and tech, growing his fortune to an estimated $100 million. Riordan was also a pioneer in philanthropy, said The New York Times, well before it “came into vogue among California’s newly wealthy.”

As mayor, Riordan “was at his best on Jan. 17, 1994,” when the magnitude-6.7 Northridge quake struck, killing at least 57 people, said the Los Angeles Times. “Within an hour,” he was issuing orders from an underground command center, “cutting red tape” to organize the response. In later years, though, he butted heads with City Council members, and the

Justice Department took control of the city’s scandal-tainted police. In 2002, he lost a bid to be Republican candidate for governor, then served briefly as state education secretary. Riordan said his earthquake response epitomized how he approached leadership. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness later,” he said, “than to get permission now.”