TAKING THE HEAT : Fire commissioner Leslie Song Winner has been a staunch advocate of women and minorities in the department. But her sharp criticism of its hiring and promotion record has drawn the wrath of opponents, and a request from the mayor that she resign.

As she awaits a City Council vote on her future, Leslie Song Winner hopes she won’t soon be known as the Los Angeles fire commissioner who got burned.

It’s been nearly three months since Winner refused to resign at Mayor Richard Riordan’s request. The mayor asked her to leave the post two days after then-Fire Chief Donald O. Manning had stepped down, following months of Fire Commission and City Council meetings critical of the department’s record in hiring and promoting women and minorities.

The Fire Department controversy again focused national attention on race relations in Los Angeles, and tarnished the image of a department whose performance in brush fires and riots had earned it a reputation for excellence and heroism.

Throughout the rancorous series of commission meetings, Winner, appointed by Riordan in July, 1993, was a thorn in the chief’s side. She upbraided Manning often, telling him his answers to questions weren’t satisfactory and saying a department videotape of female recruits failing training tests “just makes you sick.”

Winner’s frankness at commission meetings offended some of the firefighters who attended them. “She has an in-your-face type of style that turns many off,” said Capt. Ken Buzzell, president of the 3,000-member firefighters union.

For an upbeat mayor prone to boosterism, it was too much. Calling her “very disruptive,” Riordan, who had kept quiet during the controversy, said he wanted Winner off the five-member panel that oversees the fire department, emphasizing the need for “team players” on commissions.

By not giving up her seat and putting her fate before the City Council, the once-obscure fire commissioner has become the center of a standoff between the mayor and some council members who say that Winner is crucial to the commission as its strongest advocate for female and minority firefighters.

Though Riordan denies it, many see the yet-to-be-scheduled vote as the mayor’s first showdown on affirmative action, perceiving his swipe at Winner as his strongest statement yet on the issue.

As a longtime campaign consultant for liberal Democrats who is closely tied to the city’s African American political establishment, Winner differs starkly from the mayor in her background.

Riordan, a conservative millionaire, ran as an outsider who intended to shake up City Hall with corporate-style efficiency. Riordan’s chief of staff until he resigned earlier this month was William Ouchi, a UCLA management professor whose work is popular with corporate chiefs.

Over morning coffee in the Bunker Hill apartment where she lives alone and operates her own public relations business, Winner, dressed in a T-shirt and twill trousers, showed her distaste for the idea that Los Angeles could be run like IBM.

“They want that place to be like a business,” she said, pointing out of her balcony window to City Hall. “But it’s not a business. Government’s mission is to serve the public, and it can’t be run like a corporation.”

Winner’s flouting of corporate-style conformity by sharply and publicly criticizing a city department’s record on affirmative action may have brought about her dilemma, said Stan Sanders. He is a veteran of city commissions who served with Riordan on the Recreation and Parks Commission and backed his run for mayor. “Riordan is trying to hold everything he does to his tough, law-and-order, make-L.A.-safe kind of message,” Sanders said, “and diversity’s not a big part of that.”

Winner’s plight also reveals the depth of a feud between two of Los Angeles’ leading black politicians. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angles), Winner’s political patron, has remained silent during the standoff, though sources close to the mayor’s office say that with a word from Waters, Riordan would not have pushed for Winner’s removal.

Those close to both say Waters didn’t speak up for her old friend because Winner, through her Fire Commission work, has gotten close to City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, the congresswoman’s chief rival. Winner declined to comment on why Waters has not spoken out in her behalf.

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Waters denied that Winner’s ties to Ridley-Thomas had anything to do with her silence. Waters said that although she recommended Winner to Riordan for the commission seat, she does not think it is appropriate for her to intervene. “I’ve got to choose my fights carefully,” she said, “and I know a political appointment is not where I should pick fights.”

Winner’s friends and longtime associates also say it is not surprising that she would work closely with Ridley-Thomas, who had asked for a city audit that alleged widespread race and sex discrimination in the department.

“She’s very passionate about racial justice issues, and will fight to the bitter end for them, sometimes to her own personal and political detriment,” said Rick Taylor, a political consultant who was once Winner’s partner. Her current bind, Taylor said, is a case in point.

Taylor also remembers Winner abruptly giving up her lucrative stake in their campaign consulting business because she felt they had lost their sense of purpose. “We both knew we were representing clients we weren’t crazy about, but it was Leslie who came into my office one morning and said ‘This is not why I got into politics,’ breaking up our firm at the height of her career.”

Winner says it was an easy decision. “Our criteria for taking a client had become whether they could pay, and I didn’t get into politics to make money,” she said.

Winner, 52, was almost born into politics. Her father, Alfred H. Song, in 1962 became the first Asian American elected to the California Assembly. That was during her senior year at Garfield High School, where she served on the student council with Richard Alatorre, now a city councilman and one of Riordan’s strongest council supporters.

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After a year at East Los Angeles College, Winner moved to Sacramento, where her father had lined up a job for her as a secretary to a state senator. In Sacramento she met her former husband, assembly staffer Chuck Winner, and the two began working on various Democratic campaigns, eventually starting their own consulting firm in Los Angeles.

They divorced in 1975, and in 1980 Winner moved to Irvine for 10 years so that she and her three children could live near the families of Winner’s brother and sister.

Her father’s career may have drawn her to politics, but Winner says her activism can be traced to her paternal grandmother, Song Chung Yoon, a “picture bride” who left Korea for Hawaii at 16. Unhappy in her arranged marriage with a man she never loved, grandmother Song divorced her husband when Alfred Song was a teen-ager.

The two moved to Los Angeles, where Yoon worked as a seamstress and dress designer to put Alfred through college at USC, then law school. She lived with Alfred’s family in south Los Angeles until Leslie was 13, in the mid-1950s, when she she moved back to Korea to start an orphanage for children left homeless in the aftermath of the war.

Alfred Song was a liberal Democrat whose suave demeanor led some to call him “the Korean Cary Grant.” His achievements included enactment of legislation designed to protect minority voters from harassment at the polls, but his 16 years in Sacramento were cut short by controversy.

The FBI investigated Song for political wrongdoing in 1978. News accounts at the time reported that he received expensive gifts and favors from individuals who had an interest in legislation, allegations that Song denied. Though he was never indicted, negative publicity cost Song reelection. Ironically, Joseph B. Montoya, who won Song’s senate seat, was later convicted of corruption.

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Her father’s experiences kept Winner from ever running for office. She cites the pressures of political life as a major reason for her parents’ divorce.

Instead of seeking office herself, Winner worked on political campaigns. While managing David Cunningham’s successful 1973 run for the City Council, she met another young activist named Maxine Waters.

The two hit it off immediately. “We agreed on so many things,” Winner said. “We understood each other’s feelings on equity and fairness for everyone.”

Winner managed Waters’ first run for the state Assembly in 1976. But Winner never joined Waters in the Capitol, continuing to work for Cunningham and eventually becoming his chief of staff.

Winner and Waters stayed in touch, talking on the phone often, about politics and their personal lives, and getting together for dinner or visits at Waters’ house. In 1990, Winner managed Waters’ successful run for Congress.

It was Waters who in 1993 recommended Winner to Riordan for a seat on the Fire Commission, Winner said. The new mayor was eager to start a friendly relationship with Waters, according to Winner.

One of the city’s most influential African American politicians, Waters may also be the member of the Los Angeles congressional delegation closest to President Clinton.

Political consultants also say Riordan was grateful to Waters for not endorsing his opponent, Mike Woo, in the mayor’s race.

The commission proved to be fertile ground for a civil rights firebrand.

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Winner said she recalled hearing about racial discrimination in the department when she worked for Cunningham in the 1970s. Sex discrimination was not an issue then, since the first woman firefighter was hired in 1983.

A federal lawsuit in 1974 forced the city to agree that at least half of each incoming class of firefighter recruits be nonwhite. Fire officials have acknowledged that until 1993, the department maintained an unwritten policy that prohibited more than one black firefighter per four-person engine company.

Today, the fire department has made progress in integrating its rank-and-file. The 3,100-member department is 23% Latino (compared with 40% of the city), 11% African American (13% in the city), and 3.5% Asian American (6.7% in the city).

An American Civil Liberties Union study of regional fire departments released last year found that the city ranked among the best in racial and ethnic representation.

But a November, 1994, city audit was highly critical of the department, citing numerous examples of racism and sexism from interviews with firefighters, and noting that the top ranks were still nearly all white and male. Of the 20 top fire department officials, 19 are white men.

The report touched off debate on the commission about affirmative action and discrimination, including allegations that a videotape of female firefighters in training had been made to ridicule women who could not lift heavy ladders or pass other strength tests. Previously dull meetings came alive with firefighters testifying passionately about the presence--or lack--of racism and sexism.

Riordan spokeswoman Noelia Rodriguez emphasized that Winner’s style, not her views, turned Riordan against her, again raising the team analogy. “This is about approach and the teamwork necessary to bring about positive change,” Rodriguez said.

But Rodriguez would not say just how Winner failed to work with the team. “Those are personnel matters and it would not be fair to Ms. Song Winner to get into specifics,” Rodriguez said.

Not all players agree with the mayor on Winner. Fellow fire commissioner Larry Gonzalez said Winner “has been a very effective member of the team on this issue as far as I’m concerned.” Gonzalez said that he didn’t think Winner’s conduct was unusual for a commissioner. “I’m puzzled,” he said of Riordan’s request that she resign.

Ridley-Thomas said Riordan is simply upset over Winner’s staunch backing of affirmative action. “What’s at stake is obvious. The most vocal proponent of affirmative action is being taken off.”

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Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who along with Ridley-Thomas is Winner’s strongest supporter on the City Council, said Winner’s style should not be an issue, and that calling her disruptive is sexist. “In our culture we don’t want women to make noise. Men can be vocal and we call that leadership; women do that and we call it inappropriate.”

Riordan insists that support for affirmative action is not the issue, noting that Michael Yamaki, a former police commissioner highly regarded by civil rights leaders, is his chosen replacement for Winner.

But Winner is nevertheless seen by many as the torchbearer for civil rights in the fire department.

“She’s our rallying point,” said David Spence, president of the Stentorians, a group that represents African American firefighters. “She’s the only vocal advocate fighting for everybody in our department.”

Until last month, council members and the mayor’s office had sought to find a compromise plan to avoid a council showdown. Such an agreement would have allowed Winner to remain on the commission for six months to a year to help the department follow through on hiring and promotion reforms, stepping down before her term expires in 1999.

But the talks broke down, and Winner said she is now resigned to facing a council vote on her future. Neither the mayor nor Winner’s backers know whether they have the council votes to win. In the end, Winner’s fate will depend on who can field the bigger team.