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LOS ANGELES — GOP gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan has a favorite anecdote about his approach to governing. 

Soon after he became mayor of Los Angeles, he said, a group of downtown business owners complained to him about “No Parking” signs that were getting in their way. 

Riordan delegated the problem to an aide, who produced a report explaining how the signs could be removed through a time-consuming bureaucratic process. 

Riordan asked for a simpler solution. The aide went out that weekend and tore the signs down. 

“Needless to say, I promoted him,” Riordan tells audiences and interviewers in delight, “and we came up with an axiom: that in government, it is much easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission.” 

It’s an anecdote that’s often cited by people who know Riordan — those who admire him and those who don’t. 

To fans, it demonstrates the ex-mayor’s direct approach, his impatience with bureaucracy, and his ability to seal deals and produce results by unconventional means. 

To critics, it underscores Riordan’s scorn for the institutions of government, his failure to work with colleagues to solve problems and his unwillingness to share power. 

Those conflicting assessments help define the wealthy 71-year-old, who ended two terms as mayor in July and is seeking the Republican nomination March 5 to challenge Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. 

“In a way, those are contradictory traits,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “One, that he has no patience and couldn’t get along with the City Council and that sort of thing, and the other that he’s a consummate dealmaker. 

“They are contradictions. And sometimes it’s hard to know which Dick Riordan you’re dealing with.” 

Riordan is a New York native who studied philosophy at Princeton, served as an Army lieutenant in Korea and finished first in his University of Michigan Law School class. 

He moved to Southern California in 1956 for a law firm job and made his fortune in venture capital and leveraged buyouts. He claims he doesn’t know how much he’s worth now, but his wealth was estimated at $100 million nearly a decade ago. 

Riordan came late to politics, surprising even longtime colleagues when he abandoned his private sector success to run for mayor in 1993. 

He said he saw the need for leadership in a city still shaken by the 1992 riot and ran on a promise that he was “Tough Enough to Turn L.A. Around.” He spent $6 million of his own money, and won. 

Riordan said he sees a similar need now in the state, and he’s adopted the same slogan for his gubernatorial campaign, substituting “California” for “L.A.” 

“We have a vacuum of leadership which is getting us nowhere in Sacramento, and I feel compelled to fill that vacuum,” Riordan said in a recent interview. “I wish I didn’t. I’d much rather be playing golf right now, or maybe riding my bike.” 

It sounds like a joke, but Riordan said he’s serious. He said he decided to run for governor only after concluding that was how he could do the most to help the poor. 

“I think God put me on Earth to take care of poor people, particularly poor children ... and that this is what I’m being judged on by God every day,” he said. 

There was political pressure, too, from state Republicans seeking a candidate to beat Davis, and Riordan has said President Bush personally urged him to run. Term limits prevented his seeking a third term as mayor. 

But even Riordan’s critics don’t doubt the sincerity of a man who has donated 20,000 computers to schools around the country. 

Those who fault him question his methods and results, and wonder how they would translate from Los Angeles’ nonpartisan system to Sacramento. 

“The leadership of both houses is not going to do what he wants just because he wants them to. That’s not how it works up here. It’s partisan politics,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, who served on the City Council during Riordan’s mayoral tenure and clashed with him. “Nothing will get done.” 

Riordan is credited as mayor with playing a leading role in reforming the City Charter and helping elect reformers to the school board — a body over which the mayor has no direct control. His critics say he failed to back a thorough investigation of the Rampart police scandal and fault him for poor relations with the City Council. 

Central to Riordan’s popularity as mayor was that he’s a character, a friendly charmer who cracks jokes and flubs lines, keeps business waiting while he pals around with kids, and dons spandex shorts to lead community bike rides. 

His propensity for gaffes already has gotten him in trouble on the campaign trail, for example when he confused fiberglass with fiber optics at a stop in Redding. 

“People relate to Dick Riordan,” said friend Eli Broad, a major Democratic contributor who nonetheless supports Riordan for governor. “They see him as smart, elderly, a bit bumbling, but very human.” 

Riordan’s opponents have tried to make an issue of his age and health — he was treated last year for prostate cancer — but the ex-mayor said he’s never felt better. He was recently photographed shirtless, lifting weights. 

Socially moderate and fiscally conservative, Riordan drew support as mayor from Hispanics, independents and women, just the groups the state’s weakened Republican party must attract in order to oust Davis. 

For that reason top GOP leaders have lined up behind Riordan, even though his support for abortion rights and gay rights are anathema to many party members. 

Riordan’s top opponents — Secretary of State Bill Jones and Los Angeles businessman Bill Simon — hold more traditional conservative views but trail Riordan in polls, endorsements and fund-raising. 

“At least at the leadership level, many Republicans who are more conservative than him see him as good for the Republican Party because he gives them a strong candidate at the top of the ticket,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who worked in Riordan’s 1997 re-election campaign. 

Riordan’s opponents have jumped on his history of supporting Democratic candidates and causes, noting he’s donated more money to Democrats than to Republicans over the years and questioning his allegiance to the party he seeks to represent in Sacramento. 

But Riordan is seemingly unconcerned, refusing to play it safe by taking a more traditionally Republican approach during the primary. 

In recent weeks he stumped before a gay group, mused publicly that the minimum wage is too low, and appeared with some of the state’s best-known liberals before a minority civil rights group in Oakland. 

“I was Dick Riordan when I first ran for office, and I’m going to be Dick Riordan now,” Riordan said. ”... And Republicans have to decide, am I the best one to run against Davis?”