POLITICS : Katz Offers Job Goals for Los Angeles : Campaigns: Anticipating a mayoral run, the assemblyman envisions making the city ‘the Silicon Valley of transportation.’

At an event that raised $100,000 for his anticipated campaign for mayor, Assemblyman Richard Katz outlined his vision Sunday for making Los Angeles the capital of a 21st-Century mass-transit manufacturing industry that would employ thousands.

“We have the opportunity to make Los Angeles the Silicon Valley of transportation, and the next mayor ought to make that happen,” the 42-year-old San Fernando Valley Democrat said Sunday.

Katz’s message of using the mayor’s office to rebuild the industrial base of a recession-weary, jobs-hungry Southern California was heartily applauded by 400 supporters who paid $250 and $500 to attend a fund-raiser at North Hollywood’s Palomino Club, a now-traditional venue for Katz’ political events.

The Western-flavored banquet--with music by Randy and the Roughriders--was the largest of a half-dozen fund-raisers that have shown Katz, while not so well-known by voters outside his Valley-based Assembly district, as a force to be reckoned with in traditional political circles.

Katz’s finance chairman, for example, is Peter Kelly, who during most of the 1980s either headed California’s Democratic Party or chaired its southern region. One of Katz’s top supporters is movie theater-chain executive Bruce Corwin, who for two decades was a mainstay in retiring Mayor Tom Bradley’s immensely fecund fund-raising organization.

As a further sign of the assemblyman’s political pedigree, state Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), introduced Katz at Sunday’s event, calling him an “an alter ego.” Brown also praised Katz for his efforts to spare the city of Los Angeles from some of the most severe effects of this year’s state budget cuts.

In his own remarks, Katz proposed using the billions of dollars in state and federal funds slotted for mass transit and clean air goals in Los Angeles over the next 30 years to also rebuild the area’s job base.

“We’d be fools,” Katz said, if most of the billions in mass-transit dollars were not spent in a way that would “create jobs for people in our own city.”

As part of such a strategy, Katz noted that he has been the architect of legislation that provides seed money for creating an electric car manufacturing industry in Los Angeles that could once again put residents to work building cars.

Only last summer, Southern California’s last remaining auto plant--the General Motors facility in Van Nuys--shut down.

Katz, chairman of the Assembly’s Transportation Committee and a statewide leader on transit issues, is one of nearly a dozen candidates actively seeking or exploring the notion of becoming the city’s next mayor. Others include councilmen Mike Woo, Nate Holden and Joel Wachs. Bradley’s announcement last month that he would not seek a sixth term helped trigger the stampede.

In the past two weeks alone, several unexpected faces have joined the mayoral crush, including former Deputy Mayor Tom Houston and former Los Angeles school board member Julian Nava, a member of the Cal State Northridge faculty and the first Latino to throw his hat into the ring.

Katz, a state legislator since 1980, has been actively campaigning for mayor for more than a year. Last summer, he formally filed the required papers to raise funds.

Still, Katz, even during the fund-raiser, stopped short of unequivocally pledging that he will run for the city’s top post. Officially jumping into the mayoral race is difficult for Katz because he is seeking reelection Nov. 3 to the Assembly.

Supporters said Sunday that they expect the assemblyman to move more aggressively into the mayor’s race after the November election.

Also among the Katz “sponsors”--as opposed to mere contributors--at the event were former Bradley administration members, including carpenters union leader Bill Luddy, former president of the city’s powerful Planning Commission, and African-American contractor Elvin Moon, a former building commissioner.

Luddy was only one of a number of union leaders at the fund-raiser--a testimony to the appeal of Katz’s promise to use the mayor’s office to create jobs.

“If we can get him elected, he’ll do a helluva job,” Luddy said. “It’s good to hear somebody talking about building an industrial base.”

The Katz gospel also sounded good to George Mihlsten, an attorney for major developers who was at a Woo fund-raiser last week.

“He offers a vision for getting us out of our economic problems,” Milhsten said. “He’s probably created more jobs than anyone in the state with his transportation-spending initiatives.”

But Mihlsten said that while he is a well-wisher he is not endorsing anyone in the race.

Merv Adelson, former head of Lorimar Telepictures, and Kate Bartolo, vice president of government relations for Walt Disney Co., were among the entertainment industry contingent backing Katz.

Adelson, a partner in the group that built the La Costa resort, is seeking to develop Ritter Ranch, a huge housing tract in the Antelope Valley. Adelson will be holding his own fund-raiser for Katz in the coming weeks.

As head of government affairs for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Katz’s wife, Gini Barrett, has helped provide the candidate with an entree to Hollywood.