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Legendary former Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, the undisputed master of pothole politics who helped give the city he loved major league baseball, freeway call boxes and paramedics during a record 45 years in public office, died Sunday.
Hahn, 77, had been hospitalized numerous times in recent years and was admitted Wednesday to Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, where he died of heart failure at 6:30 a.m.
First elected when City Hall was the tallest building in town, Hahn served through nine U.S. presidencies and played a key role in shaping the nation's most populous county.
He helped lure the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, established the paramedic program and played a lead role in the creation of myriad civic edifices, from the Music Center to the seat of county government--renamed the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in his honor after he retired. He successfully led the fight for a sales tax hike that is helping to finance the county's expanding transit system. On a smaller scale, he designed the county flag and seal.
With a folksy manner and the oratorical style of a country preacher, Hahn, who was white, was beloved in his heavily black South-Central Los Angeles district, where he was overwhelmingly reelected, even over black challengers. He retired in 1992, five years after suffering a stroke that confined him to a wheelchair.
"He was a universal spirit, completely in step with the universal environment of Southern California," said the Rev. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray, pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. "The door to his office was the door to his heart. His office was portable. It was wherever people were hurting. He was healing."
Hahn's political career began in 1947, when at age 26 he became what was then the youngest person elected to the Los Angeles City Council. In 1952, at 32, he became the youngest elected to the county Board of Supervisors.
"Even those who criticized him the most followed his style in how they represented their districts," said Harry Hufford, former chief administrative officer of the county. "Some were quick to criticize, but they were even quicker to emulate."
Hahn appealed to his black constituency in symbolic, as well as practical, ways.
He...