L.A. ELECTIONS / 5TH COUNCIL DISTRICT : Dueling Consultants Bring Firepower to Hotly Contested Runoff : Feuer’s Larry Levine shortens the odds for liberals by using mailers with pinpoint accuracy to target an unlikely constituency.

How to help long-shot liberal candidates prevail in post-riot, post-recession Los Angeles?

Ask political consultant Larry Levine.

Levine helped land Michael Feuer, a little-known Westside public service lawyer, in next Tuesday’s runoff for the Los Angeles City Council seat formerly held by Zev Yaroslavsky. Last year, Levine helped propel another low-profile liberal, Wally Knox, past a crowded Democratic primary field in a successful bid for the Assembly seat vacated by Burt Margolin, a Westside Democrat.

What’s Levine’s recipe?

Using mailers targeted with the accuracy of heat-seeking missiles, he has helped his liberal clients appeal to an unlikely audience: the right-leaning, largely male, pro-cop, anti-crime, pro-Mayor Richard Riordan voters. To Levine, these are key Los Angeles voters in an era in which few citizens go to the polls--and those who do are often angry and frustrated.

It is an approach that might make Levine’s die-hard Democratic father and grandfather wonder where they went wrong.

Levine, 56, of Van Nuys, grew up helping his father hand out Truman and union pamphlets on the streets of Brooklyn. He was weaned on stories of how his grandfather, a garment district businessman, gave labor leader Samuel Gompers a basement hide-out during the early organizing days.

But in present-day Los Angeles politics, Levine is prevailing with mail that makes liberals look like the most zealous proponents of law and order around.

Last year his barrage of tough anti-crime mailers helped Knox, a little-known union lawyer and community college board member, pull off the upset primary win that virtually assured his election to the Assembly. Bigger-name contenders such as West Hollywood City Council members Abbe Land and Paul Koretz, Los Angeles school board member Mark Slavkin and environmental activist Laura Lake were left in the dust.

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Levine’s work for Feuer, former director of the Bet Tzedek legal clinic, is even more impressive.

At the outset of the primary campaign, Barbara Yaroslavsky had seemed destined to claim her husband’s seat in the 5th City Council District, which stretches from the Fairfax district to Sherman Oaks.

But in a matter of months, Feuer moved from long-shot to front-runner. He won 40% of the vote in the April primary, outdistancing Yaroslavsky and Los Angeles school board veteran Roberta Weintraub.

Yaroslavsky responded by hiring a new political consultant, Rick Taylor, and going on the offensive.

If Feuer wins, he will owe a measure of credit to the wiry, razor-witted Levine, who says he lives by the credo: “Raise me enough money to make the message.”

Developing messages powerful enough to sway voters is part art and part science. Levine sometimes goes by the polls and sometimes by his gut. He then uses computer technology to conduct some modern political matchmaking between candidate and voters, and draws up a plan for targeted mail and precinct-walking.

It is a technique used by all political consultants, but Levine’s admirers say he has a special knack for fashioning attention-grabbing and effective campaign themes. It varies according to the candidate and the community. For Knox and Feuer in Los Angeles, it has been decidedly hard-edged and anti-crime.

Feuer’s crime mailers have featured grainy, monochromatic close-ups of handcuffed criminals and prison bars. There is usually a dramatic quote emblazoned across the page, one of which read: “The state is turning violent criminals loose on our streets before they are ready to lead crime-free lives.”

Constituents have to read other mailers to find the candidate’s liberal credentials, such as his support for abortion rights and his legal work at Bet Tzedek, which helped the elderly and the poor.

Levine wasn’t always a consultant, and even today prefers to be known as a “political manager,” joking that consultants tell other people to do the work he does.

He began his career as a political reporter for Copley News Service but realized that he felt uncomfortable in the role of observer after covering a violent Century City anti-war protest against President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

“All of a sudden I’m in the mid-’60s and the world is virtually falling apart around us,” he said. “And the Democratic Party, into which I was born, is in shambles and I’m sitting passively having to maintain my objectivity and write about it--it got really, really hard.”

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He drifted for a couple years, dabbling in advertising, but in 1970 became captivated by an obscure anti-war candidate for U.S. Senate named George Brown. Levine wrote a letter to Brown, and his wordsmithing caught the eye of Brown’s campaign, which led to a job as campaign press secretary.

During that unsuccessful primary campaign, Levine rubbed shoulders with the next generation of California’s Democratic political leadership--among others, a young assemblyman named Willie Brown and a future congressman named Howard Berman.

Later, Levine carved out a niche, specializing in local campaigns that included Los Angeles Democrat Diane Watson’s first race for state Senate.

Candidates who have worked with him swear by his political instincts and praise his ability to get mileage out of shoestring budgets. These days, Levine’s instincts are telling him to broaden Feuer’s message. With Feuer now in a strong position in the runoff, the candidate’s mail is addressing subjects other than crime. Recent pieces focus on women’s issues, and Feuer’s support for abortion rights.

As the race nears the finish, Levine appears to alternate between moments of sheer panic and coldblooded calculation.

“Nobody in his right mind would do this for just the money,” Levine said. “You have to care about something. You have to feel like you’re making a difference.”