Katz Raises $100,000 in Expected Mayoral Bid : Politics: He envisions L.A. as the capital of a mass transit manufacturing industry.

At an event that raised $100,000 for his anticipated campaign for mayor, Assemblyman Richard Katz outlined his vision last weekend 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 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.

As a mayoral candidate, Katz’s expected strength would be among Jews, Valley residents and labor union members.

Katz, 42, has represented the San Fernando Valley in Sacramento since 1980 and, as chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, is viewed as one of the foremost architects of state transit policy and legislation.

Katz remains an unofficial mayoral candidate. His bid for the city’s top post is complicated by the fact that he is seeking reelection to his legislative seat in the Nov. 3 election. Although facing nominal opposition this year, Katz’s days in the Assembly are numbered. Because of term limits, he can serve only one more two-year term.

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

Katz’s finance chairman 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, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) introduced Katz at Sunday’s event, calling him his alter ego. Brown also praised Katz for his efforts to spare Los Angeles from some of the most severe effects of this year’s state budget cuts.

In his 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 mass transit dollars were not spent to “create jobs for people in our own city.”

As part of such a strategy, Katz said he has authored legislation that provides seed money to create an electric car manufacturing industry in Los Angeles.

Katz is one of nearly a dozen candidates seeking or exploring the notion of becoming the city’s next mayor. Councilmen Mike Woo and Joel Wachs have announced their intention to run. Bradley said last month that he will not seek a sixth term.

Katz last summer filed the required papers to raise funds for a possible mayoral race. Supporters said Sunday that they expect the assemblyman to move officially into the mayor’s race after Nov. 3 and name James Carville, a key political adviser to Democratic presidential contender Bill Clinton, to run his campaign.

Also among the Katz “sponsors”--as opposed to contributors--at the Sunday event were former Bradley Administration members, including 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 hell of a 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,” Mihlsten said. “He’s probably created more jobs than anyone in the state with his transportation-spending initiatives.”

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

As head of government affairs for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Katz’s wife, Gini Barrett, has provided the candidate with an entree to Hollywood-based political givers, including Merv Adelson, former head of Lorimar Telepictures, and Kate Bartolo, vice president of government relations for Walt Disney Co.