Parting Politics Is Sweet Sorrow for Katz

The bittersweet irony of the Assembly swearing-in ceremony Monday was not lost on veteran Valley 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 unless the term limit law 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 cell phone.

That’s only temporary. Katz is opening a 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 temporarily precluded by law from doing 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 termed out 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 smile 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, handing 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 one person could make a difference.

In 1980, at 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. And the most important thing Brown did for Katz was to give his workaholic acolyte 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 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 the San Fernando Valley.

On that front, Katz secured funding to buy the land and build Mission College and the science building at CSUN. 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 their loads. His district has many gravel quarries and constituents had complained about broken windshields.

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 Transit 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.

One thing Katz said he will miss as a civilian is being able to pick up the phone and solve a problem, as he did after a school bus accident in his district.

Outraged to find out bus drivers could work while the state checked their criminal records for crimes against children, Katz stopped the practice immediately. After that, some 2,000 applicants with questionable credentials were weeded out in the first year.

Another Katz priority was constituent service, even if the problem had nothing to do with state government. He said many people don’t know what the Assembly does and their calls to his office might be their only contact with government.

To his chagrin, Katz found out just how little people knew about what the Assembly did when he tried to use his Sacramento accomplishments in a 1993 bid to be mayor of Los Angeles.

One of roughly two dozen candidates vying for the post, Katz became best known for a campaign ad that didn’t get him many votes, but showed he looked good in a leather jacket. He finished 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 have been trying as well, as the Legislature adjusted to term limits and the Democrats lost the majority and the last year, its patriarch, powerful longtime speaker Willie Brown.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) likens 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.

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 before 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 most people’s eyes, 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 a recent tribute dinner for Katz. “No way we could be a majority . . . if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Richard Katz.”

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

A police chief told of Katz showing up alone on Christmas Day with food platters for working officers; a gay rights attorney lauded Katz’s work on discrimination and health issues; a Native American praised him for protecting Indian remains.

“It wasn’t just roads and highways,” said Harvey Lapin of Northridge at the reception before dinner. “I’d take the bullet for him.”

Katz made it possible for developmentally-disabled people, like Lapin’s son, to remain in community care residences which were threatened by proposed budget cuts.

Characteristically, former aide Monical said, Katz continued to work on behalf of the developmentally-disabled community, itself badly divided, and two years later legislation was passed that regulated the use of negative behavior modification.

“He did the right things for the right reasons,” Monical said.

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.

If in need of occupational therapy, Katz knows where to find it--in his rose garden where some 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.”

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Profile of Richard Katz

Years served: State Assembly, 1980-1996

Family: Wife, Gini Barrett

Key legislation: Sponsored toughest ground-water protection legislation in the country, a law requiring gravel trucks to cover their loads, and another securing funding for Mission College.