Clinton Strategist Carville to Join Katz’s Mayoral Drive : Campaign: Valley assemblyman says choice signals his seriousness.

State Assemblyman Richard Katz said Monday that his selection of James Carville, the Southern political consultant widely credited with helping Gov. Bill Clinton win the presidency, is meant to bring front-runner status to his fledgling campaign for mayor of Los Angeles.

“Obviously Carville’s prestige adds to our campaign,” said Katz, the Panorama City-based lawmaker whom early polls have shown to be a dark-horse candidate for the city’s top executive post.

Carville, who was Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, said he will come to Los Angeles after Thanksgiving to iron out the details of his role with the Katz campaign.

The 48-year-old Carville, a Louisiana native, has an “uncanny knack for understanding what working men and women are thinking about and want,” said Katz, a moderate Democrat who has represented a working-class, ethnically mixed Assembly district in the Valley for 10 years.

“His selection sends a clear message that this is a serious campaign, a first-rate campaign and that I’m totally committed to winning this race,” Katz said. Nineteen people have signaled their intentions to run, with Katz, 42, viewed as among the nine most credible candidates in the April primary election.

However, he has yet to make a formal declaration of his intention to run, unlike other hopefuls, including Los Angeles Councilmen Michael Woo, Joel Wachs, Nate Holden and County Transportation Commissioner Nicholas Patsaouras. Businessman Richard Riordan is expected to join their ranks at a press conference Wednesday.

A consultant with Carville’s reputation brings a kind of instant cachet to any candidacy, said Joe Cerrell, a veteran political consultant. “There’s no doubt that Carville brings credibility,” he said.

Other big names in the political consulting business, including Bob Squier, a nationally known media consultant who also worked on the Clinton campaign, are involved with other mayoral candidates, Cerrell noted. Squier is working for Woo’s campaign.

But having a big star in the campaign can also have its pitfalls, others maintain.

For example, will Carville, whose romance with Mary Matalin, a top official in the George Bush campaign, made for gossip-column fodder, overshadow the candidate, asked USC political science professor H. Eric Schockman.

“If Carville becomes the focus, the question becomes: Whose campaign is it?” Schockman said.

Katz, like others, has formed a campaign fund-raising committee and recently joined Woo and Holden in officially notifying city officials that they had each raised $200,000 for their campaigns.

Carville said he expects to be the main strategist for the Katz campaign but that details remain to be worked out.

“I want to help him the best way I can,” Carville said. He said his job is to “bring a lot of energy and some creativity” to the task of getting his clients elected. “We don’t do polls, mail or TV ads,” he said.

Carville had labored for years in relative obscurity as a political operative until 1991 when he helped engineer Harris Wofford’s stunning come-from-behind victory over former U.S. Atty. General Dick Thornburgh, a Bush appointee, in the bellwether 1991 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race.

The Wofford race was widely seen as a sign of serious GOP weakness in a major urban state on the eve of the upcoming presidential election and it made Carville a hot commodity.

Although some local observers wonder how much time he is likely to spend on the Los Angeles mayoral contest, Carville denied that the race was too little for him to tackle.

“Look, I gave my word a year ago to do this for Richard, and I like Richard, and besides, you know, being the mayor of Los Angeles isn’t really chopped liver either,” Carville said. “Besides that, there’s not a lot of other races going on.”

Still, one 1993 race involves Gov. James Florio of New Jersey, a Carville client, who has run into stormy political waters with an unpopular tax plan. But Carville said that Florio’s race--with the runoff next November--should not interfere with his efforts for Katz.