A Small Surprise

The mayor of Los Angeles fulfills mostly ceremonial functions, and in this role, Norris Poulson, 65, an accountant and former Republican Congressman, is an unqualified success. He gets to his office promptly at 7:30 a.m., turns to his task with an unfettered spirit, and even his enemies admit that he is a superior civic greeter, ribbon snipper and proclamation signer. He achieved brief national fame in 1959, when he told Visitor Nikita Khrushchev off in no uncertain terms.

Up for re-election last week, Poulson figured as a shoo-in for a third term. The nine-candidate field was full of flyweights. There were no issues in the nonpartisan election ("It was the most boring campaign I can remember," said a local editor), and only 41% of the voters turned out. But the election did not quite work out according to plan. Poulson led, but his 179,273 votes were nearly 100,000 less than the combined total of his opponents and he was forced into a May 31 runoff election with former Democratic Congressman Sam Yorty, a lawyer and persistent politician who has been out of office since 1954.

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