Katz: Setting a Course for Next Time

You can lay on thick layers of emotional writing about the agonies of political defeat and the joys of victory.

Elections lend themselves to that. And there was plenty of material on election night at Democratic headquarters in downtown Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel. The old hotel was just loaded with winners and losers.

But amid all that pathos was something more interesting: a politician who was looking ahead, rather than celebrating or mourning the past. Democratic Assemblyman Richard Katz of Sylmar, oblivious to the tumult around him, was putting in a hard night’s work, unsentimentally charting his own future.

Katz wasn’t part of the sad scene in Suite 438. There, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp presided over the gloomy hospitality room for Proposition 131, the losing term-limit and public campaign finance measure he had backed. With a few breaks, luck or better tactics, Van de Kamp--not Dianne Feinstein--would have been the Democratic nominee for governor.

Things were happier in other places. For the sheer joy of victory, you couldn’t beat the party for Assemblywoman Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, just elected to Congress. A band played and people cheered. “I love my work,” she told supporters. “I love it better when I win.”

And then there was Katz, pursuing his tunnel-vision course. He’s considering running for mayor of Los Angeles in 1993 and his evening at the Biltmore was a small but important step in the long, obstacle-strewn path ahead.

This is when campaigns begin, long before the election, when the candidates meet the contributors, Chamber of Commerce types, labor leaders, lobbyists, neighborhood activists and all the others who form a campaign organization.

He was all over the hotel, a man in motion. Into the Gold Room, where Kathleen Brown was celebrating. Over to the Crystal Room, into the despair of the losing Big Green campaign. Out into the hall again, over to the bar. Katz shook hands with labor leaders. He shook hands with business people. He shook hands with fellow pols, with neighborhood leaders. Why, he even shook hands with me.

Katz is a slender man of 40 with dark hair and a mustache. He’s been in the Legislature a decade and now feels ready to move on. He has immersed himself in issues important to his San Fernando Valley district and to the city as a whole. He has proposed paving over the Los Angeles River for another freeway to the Valley. He’s also pressed for light rail and tried to bring some order into the confused political organization of L.A. public transit.

But he’s got his liabilities. For one thing, some people who know him wonder whether he has the temperament. Katz affects sort of a laid-back, old-Valley country style, wearing cowboy boots and riding horses. But he’s intense--often tense--about his work. When things go bad in the office, I’m told, he explodes at his staff.

He’s also not as well-known as potential rivals. State lawmakers are politics’ unknown soldiers. Los Angeles television disdains state Capitol news. And there are so many senators and Assembly members that individual lawmakers find it hard to make the newspapers unless they’ve won a major legislative victory or been accused of a crime.

Possibly in an attempt to fathom reluctant editors’ minds, Katz has just hired one to be his chief of staff. He’s Doug Dowie, former managing editor of the Daily News, whose temper is supposed to be as hot as that of his new boss. Those who know them expect the sound waves to hit the Grapevine if they ever clash.

There was no sign of that Tuesday night when the Katz-Dowie team hit the Biltmore.

He finally sat down for a drink in the bar. Katz had a coke. Dowie and I had beer. “I’m still interested in running for mayor,” he said. “I’m looking at it very seriously.”

As Katz sees it, his strength against the other contenders is his Valley base. He figures he’d win the Valley over any of the other possibilities--Mayor Tom Bradley, council members Zev Yaroslavsky, Gloria Molina, Richard Alatorre and Joy Picus or City Atty. Jim Hahn and Assemblyman Mike Roos.

I asked him if he thought being a state legislator would hurt him. “No,” he said, “I’m not in the City Council and that hurts you more.”

Soon, Katz’s attention started to wander. He’d given me all he wanted--and all I could use. Further conversation would be a waste of time. He jumped up and joined a large party a couple of tables away.

If Katz keeps on with it, he’ll be table-hopping for another 2 1/2 years, until the election in the spring of 1993. So will the others. Then it will be their night to celebrate, or to mourn.