L.A. ELECTIONS / 5TH COUNCIL DISTRICT : Dueling Consultants Bring Firepower to Hotly Contested Runoff : Yaroslavsky’s Rick Taylor gives campaign a new, combative tone. He is known as aggressive, creative, sometimes malicious.

Barbara Yaroslavsky’s bid to fill the 5th District City Council seat once held by her husband, Zev, seemed in trouble.

Despite her wide name recognition and at least a $100,000 fund-raising lead over all other opponents, she had come in a distant second in the April primary to Mike Feuer, a relatively unknown public service lawyer. He had beaten her by 13 percentage points.

To win the June runoff in the Westside-to-San Fernando Valley district, the Yaroslavsky campaign needed new life, a change in direction, a tougher, more aggressive tack.

Enter Rick Taylor, a longtime Yaroslavsky friend and street-savvy political consultant who by his own admission favors only one campaign strategy: a full-throttle offensive attack.

Since hiring Taylor last month, Yaroslavsky has used campaign mailers and public appearances to launch bruising attacks on Feuer in an attempt to paint him as a liberal extremist who is willing to say anything to win votes--charges Feuer adamantly rejects.

As the hotly contested race nears its conclusion Tuesday, much of the focus has turned to Taylor and the new, combative tone of the campaign. Although he insists that the strategy is as much Yaroslavsky’s idea as his own, other consultants and former political opponents say the approach is typical Taylor: aggressive, creative, but sometimes malicious.

Even critics concede that Taylor, 41, is a talented, seasoned campaign strategist who brings boundless energy and direction to a campaign.

“He’s won some good races,” said Larry Levine, who is Feuer’s head strategist and has known Taylor for more than 20 years. “You don’t last in this business as long as he has without knowing the business.”

But others, including former opponents, describe Taylor with such terms as “erratic,” “annoying” and “immature.”

A stocky, mustachioed man with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a fondness for wearing jeans and tennis shoes even in formal settings, Taylor makes no apology for running a combative campaign. But he said he always abides by two rules: “I never lie and I never break the law.”

Critics say that doesn’t stop him from playing fast and loose with the truth.

When Taylor worked on the unsuccessful campaign of City Council candidate Tom LaBonge in 1993, he helped create a mailer suggesting that the son of former school board member and council candidate Jackie Goldberg was driven to school in a limousine paid for by the school district--a charge Goldberg vehemently denied.

“They put out some sleazy, misleading mailers,” said Sharon Delugach, who worked on Goldberg’s campaign and is now her chief of staff.

LaBonge lost that race, but Taylor said he stands by the accusation.

In the current race, Levine said Taylor lied when he recently accused Feuer of planting a spy in Yaroslavsky’s camp and accepting polling information stolen by the spy.

“The Yaroslavsky campaign has done some things that I would not do,” Feuer said. “The total fabrication of information goes a step beyond anything that I would do.”

Taylor says he is simply trying to define Feuer for the voters.

“They may not like what I say, but they can’t say it isn’t true,” he said. “At least they can’t prove me wrong.”

Some have also lauded Taylor for employing creative campaign tactics. Others call them simple gimmick politics.

In 1989, when Taylor was working on the election effort of school board candidate Mark Slavkin, the campaign hired a man dressed in a chicken costume to appear at a fund-raiser of incumbent Alan Gershman to challenge him to a debate.

“It was one of the most hysterical scenes,” said Taylor as he described Gershman running down the street, chased by the chicken as several television news cameras recorded the incident.

Slavkin won, but Gershman didn’t see the humor in the incident. “I have never seen anything so negative--I would not participate in it,” he said after the race.

Taylor won his first political battle at age 18, when as a Venice High School student he grew a scraggly beard to challenge a district dress code that prohibited facial hair, T-shirts and shorts on campus. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Taylor’s challenge forced the district to repeal the dress code.

A few years later, as he faced the prospects of being drafted during the Vietnam War, he dropped out of Santa Monica City College to work on the presidential campaign of George McGovern, who Taylor hoped would end the war. McGovern lost, but due to a family crisis Taylor was never drafted.

Addicted to the excitement of the rough-and-tumble world of campaign politics, Taylor spent the next 20 years working on dozens of campaigns throughout the country, including Tom Bradley’s successful bid for mayor of Los Angeles, a Senate race in Vermont and the campaign for the minister of transportation in Canada.

“Not bad for a guy with a 2.3 grade point average from Venice High,” Taylor likes to say.

In the mid- and late 1970s he took a hiatus from the campaigns to manage the council offices of former Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Robert Farrell. He also headed the public affairs operation for council President John Ferraro.

Most recently, Taylor ran Ferraro’s successful City Council reelection bid in April and worked on the campaign to win voter approval of eight City Charter amendments that supporters say will improve efficiency and accountability in City Hall. Although one of the measures had been rejected by voters four times in the past 15 years, this time all eight were adopted--due in large part to the overwhelming popularity of the measure’s main backer, Mayor Richard Riordan.

Taylor, a single father of two teen-age boys, said that despite politics’ inherent mudslinging, he still enjoys the fight--and even more the addictive taste of victory.

“Winning is an unbelievable feeling,” he said. “When I don’t enjoy it anymore, I’ll quit.”