Close of Assembly Career Is Bittersweet for Katz

The bittersweet irony of the Assembly swearing-in ceremony Monday was not lost on veteran Los Angeles lawmaker Richard Katz.

Sure, he had been given a hero’s welcome at a members’ dinner the night before, kudos he earned by masterminding the return of the Assembly to Democrats.

But that’s a far cry from being in charge, in power, in the limelight, as Katz could plainly see when reporters and camera crews engulfed new Speaker Cruz Bustamante.

Katz took it all in, knowing that unless the law limiting Assembly members to six years changes, he will never be called “Mr. Speaker.” Instead, he may go down in the history books as the guy who had the misfortune to lead Democrats the one year in decades that Republicans were in charge.

It also happened to be his last year in the Assembly.

After 16 years in the thick of things in Sacramento, Katz is out of a job--more than a job, a calling--that has defined him most of his adult life.

“It was definitely bittersweet,” the 46-year-old Katz said of the Sacramento ceremony. “I had done all the work and now, here I was a spectator. I knew going in that was the risk. Still, it was difficult.”

And a bit unsettling, especially for someone who admittedly doesn’t deal well with change and only recently said, “There’s a part of me that believes I’m going to wake up and this term limits stuff will go away.”

Alas, Katz woke up this week without a staff or commodious digs and became a bit of a vagabond, reflecting on the changing of the guard in Sacramento from his new “office”--a car and a cellular phone.

That’s only temporary. Katz is opening a San Fernando Valley office from which he will launch a consulting business. He will offer his expertise in politics, transportation and water policy. Strategic planning, he calls it, not to be confused with lobbying, which he is precluded by law from doing temporarily and is not interested in anyway.

“I don’t want to be somebody who hangs on,” Katz said.

That does not mean he won’t come back.

Katz said he is contemplating a run for the state Senate when Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) is forced out by term limits in two years.

Those who know Katz can’t imagine him doing anything else.

“You can’t separate the elected official from the man,” said Jeff Monical, a former Katz aide. “You can’t separate his desire to work in public office from his personality. It’s all so much a part of him.”

A fast-talking, fast-walking guy, who wears cowboy boots even with a tux, Katz is known for having a healthy ego and an intensity to match.

His face is like a slide show of emotions, all smiles and charm one minute, storm clouds the next. Friends describe him as passionate. Others whisper “hothead.’

Katz learned about politics at the dinner table in Baldwin Hills, and handed out bumper stickers for John F. Kennedy as a kid. After majoring in political science at San Diego State, Katz quit law school to work with the late San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, the first of two mentors who taught him that one person could make a difference.

In 1980, at the age of 30, Katz was elected to the Assembly and met his next mentor, Willie Brown.

Katz said the most important thing Brown taught him was how to count votes. The most important break Brown gave his workaholic acolyte was a chance in 1985 to run the Transportation Committee.

At first, Katz, who had by then already written the nation’s toughest ground water protection act, wasn’t interested in trucks and highways. But he quickly became, in his own words, a transportation policy wonk.

An early law-and-order Democrat, Katz worked to throw Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird out of office, but also wrote gun control laws.

He said he would like to be remembered for fighting for his principles and delivering on behalf of his Valley constituents.

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On that front, Katz secured funding to buy the land and build Mission College and the science building at Cal State Northridge. He counts closing Lopez Canyon landfill and turning Wilson Canyon into a park among his achievements.

California drivers can thank Katz for protecting them from falling gravel. After driving down the freeway one day behind an open gravel truck, Katz embarked on a quixotic but eventually successful crusade to get the trucking industry to cover loads.

Katz is especially proud of getting a domestic partners benefits bill out of the Legislature, even though it was vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The Sylmar lawmaker wrote legislation that consolidated Los Angeles County transit operations into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--the right thing to do, despite the agency’s current problems, Katz said.

But a man with many ideas and the chutzpah to present them has to take a few falls. Katz became the butt of comedians’ jokes about wacky Californians after he advocated turning the concrete-lined Los Angeles River into a freeway.

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A more serious low point was Katz’s ill-fated mayoral bid in 1993. To his chagrin, Katz found out just how little people knew about what the Assembly did when he tried to sell his Sacramento accomplishments to Los Angeles voters. He finished a distant fourth.

The campaign foundered in part because political consultant James Carville had just helped elect President Clinton and reneged on his promise to be a hands-on consultant, Katz said.

“That campaign took a lot out of me,” Katz says now. The last two years in Sacramento were trying as well, as the Legislature adjusted to term limits and the Democrats lost the majority and their patriarch, powerful Speaker Willie Brown.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) compares the Democratic caucus to a dysfunctional family. “Big Brother [Katz] had to pick up after Daddy left.”

The vacuum left by Brown was enormous, and quarrelsome legislators spent more time jockeying to see who would succeed Katz than listening to him.

Lacking clout and knowing he couldn’t duplicate Brown’s tight-fisted control of the Assembly or the caucus, Katz concentrated on consensus-building--none too successfully, he would be quick to add. Then, last summer, the group coalesced around the coordinated Assembly campaigns Katz spearheaded.

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Kuehl points out that seeds of the November victory were sown by Katz all year. His media strategy was to show how aspects of the GOP agenda affected people’s lives. Whenever a GOP legislator brought forth something that might look extreme--or silly--to moderate voters, Katz was there waving the flag.

“He set up people’s attitude that there is a big difference between Republicans and Democrats,” Kuehl said.

Not everyone is complimentary. Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park) said Katz was a “bit of a prima donna” who put self-preservation and his own agenda ahead of what should have been a leader’s priority: protecting the members.

“Here’s a guy who would be king, but didn’t have the courage to lead his troops into battle,” Martinez said.

In the eyes of many, he redeemed himself on that score by throwing his prodigious energy into the Assembly campaigns, and winning them, despite having nothing to gain personally from the triumph.

“What do you say when you’re down and someone pulls you out of the fire and into the sunlight?” Bustamante said at a recent tribute dinner for Katz. “No way we could be a majority . . . if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Richard Katz.”

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More than 300 people showed up for Katz’s love fest. In addition to grateful legislators, a parade of Katz’s fans recounted his deeds large and small.

Accustomed as Katz is to a frenetic pace that starts with a 6 a.m. basketball game and ends at 10 p.m., he is likely to need outlets for his prodigious energy.

Wife Gini Barrett, a motion picture industry executive, the horses, goat and the rest of their menagerie of pets await him in Sylmar. If he is in need of occupational therapy, Katz knows where to find it--in his rose garden, where about 50 bushes grow thanks to the intricate irrigation system Katz installed and tinkers with endlessly.

Why roses?

“They are a lot like politics,” Katz said. “They have beauty but can hurt you at the same time.”