Councilman Wachs Names His Mayoral Campaign Team

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs on Monday named a political team to run his 1993 campaign for mayor, including a veteran consultant whose work is known to San Fernando Valley voters.

Giving the team its local anchor will be consultant Harvey Englander, who helped guide Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the northwest Valley, to a squeaker victory in 1991 against Valley-based school board member Julie Korenstein.

“The campaign is still going to come from my head, but I need help this time,” Wachs said in an interview after releasing the names of his consulting team. “For 22 years, I’ve run all my campaigns myself. But this is too massive.”

Last week, Wachs became the fifth of 19 mayoral candidates to officially report that he had raised $200,000 for his race.

Wachs picked Severin/Aviles Associates, Inc., a New York-based firm, to produce his TV ads and to work as his senior strategist.

“Jay Severin will be the top guy on my team,” said Wachs, who spent four days getting to know Severin, a consultant with a long list of political clients, before agreeing to hire him.

Wachs also named Penn & Schoen Associates to do his polling. The firm’s clients have included several New York-area politicians, including Mayor David Dinkins, former mayor Ed Koch and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Paul Koretz, a West Hollywood city councilman, will be his campaign coordinator and Thomas H. Hall, of the Santa Monica-based Maverick Group, will handle his fund raising.

Englander will perform the “nitty-gritty work of organizing the local campaign,” Wachs said. “He’s got a tremendous amount of local experience.”

Englander, an Orange County-based consultant, has a reputation as a street-fighter.

“I see nothing wrong having a street-fighter on my team,” Wachs said of Englander. “We’re going to fight fair. But we’re going to fight hard.”

Dick Rosengarten, publisher of a political newsletter, recently awarded Englander his “911 Award,” an informal honor he gives consultants who rescue troubled political careers.

Rosengarten tapped Englander for the award for his work on the just-completed campaign of Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana and on the June, 1991, campaign for Bernson.

Both men won reelection despite predictions they were in danger of losing.

Englander also ran Howard Finn’s successful 1981 campaign for the Los Angeles City Council seat in the northeast Valley and Councilman Michael Woo’s successful 1985 campaign against incumbent Peggy Stevenson.

Woo is one of the top contenders in the upcoming mayor’s race.

During the fall 1992 political season, Englander ran a controversial campaign to permit poker clubs in Hawthorne.

As part of that effort, Englander hired a subcontractor, Basil Kimbrew, to conduct a voter registration drive that is now the target of a voter fraud inquiry by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Englander has denied wrongdoing and said the chairman of the pro-gambling campaign “blew the whistle” on Kimbrew’s “negligent work” on Englander’s advice.

Moreover, Englander said the committee plans to sue Kimbrew to recover money it paid him to register voters, saying that some names Kimbrew turned in were invalid.

In addition to the Wachs campaign, Englander will be running the campaigns of two Valley-based City Council candidates next spring--Al Dib, an Arleta businessman running for the seat of retiring lawmaker Ernani Bernardi, and Laura Chick, who will be trying to unseat incumbent Councilwoman Joy Picus.