Agent-Turned-Assemblyman Sets His Sights on a Bigger Role

In a roomful of egos, Democrat Kevin Murray of Los Angeles can still create his own kind of sizzle on the floor of the California Assembly, even as the oratory ends and the mood turns social.

Tall, broad-shouldered, the drape of his stylish suit just right, he moves through the chamber with a big-city confidence that exudes more kissy-face Hollywood--where he once worked as a talent agent--than backslapping Sacramento.

Nuzzling up to women colleagues, engaging in R-rated banter, bachelor Murray, 36, could just as easily be partying on Grammys night, which he has also done.

But no one who knows him is fooled. Murray is not here just for the laughs.

Beginning his third year as an assemblyman, he is one of only four African Americans in the 80-member Assembly and is one of the entertainment industry’s best friends in Sacramento. Now, assisted by the Democrats’ return to power in the lower house, he is making serious moves to become a rising legislative star.

Acknowledging that ambition is helping to propel him, Murray said: “I’ve got a handle on the system. There are ideas I can generate. Certainly I am making a political statement. I have confidence in my abilities, and I think I have a bit of vision, a bit of . . . understanding how to get things done. And so I’m going to go for it.”

Murray said he will run for an open state Senate seat that Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) expects to vacate in 1998 if term limits remain in force.

To demonstrate why he believes he deserves to get there, he is expanding his base in the Assembly as a shaper of policy. So far this year, he has:

* Secured the chairmanship of the powerful Assembly Transportation Committee, which holds sway over state roads, bridges, transit systems and the Caltrans budget of nearly $6 billion.

* Won the chairmanship of the Legislature’s seven-member Black Caucus, three of whom are state senators and all of whom, Murray notes with satisfaction, have “fared well” in landing important 1997 committee assignments.

* Introduced a flurry of 17 mostly consumer-friendly bills in the first few days of the legislative session--more than any Assembly member has introduced, and nearly as many as Murray managed to get passed--or saw vetoed--in all of 1995 and 1996.

* Strengthened his staff by the addition of skilled legislative aides such as John Stevens, a transportation expert hired as chief consultant to Murray’s Transportation Committee.

He has failed, however, at two other profile-raising attempts. He came up short in his longshot bid to become Assembly speaker, which went to Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno); and in the stab he took--halfheartedly, he says--at being named to the Democratic National Committee.

One who did get picked for the DNC was former Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), perhaps Murray’s strongest rival if there is a race to replace Watson.

The contest is expected to be decided in the 1998 Democratic primary, with the winner likely to face no serious Republican opposition in the heavily Democratic district.

Criticism of Murray, both in Sacramento and among rivals in his district, is that he is “just another politician,” is “erratic,” has “no follow-through.”

According to one critic, Jamie Court, advocacy director for the Proposition 103 Project, which monitors insurance issues, Murray “took a walk on his constituents” by siding with the insurance industry on the last frenzied night of the 1996 session, voting to hike auto insurance rates in urban areas.

Murray replied that his opponents misread the bill and an amendment he attached to protect minorities from excessive rates. Court disagreed.

On the other hand, said Don Fields, who lobbies for both business and public advocacy groups, Murray clearly sided with consumers on his “courageous” opposition to industry-backed earthquake insurance legislation that was enacted last year.

Murray said he comes to lawmaking naturally.

He says he represents constituents just as he represented clients as a talent agent and lawyer for the William Morris Agency and later as a children’s court lawyer. As an assemblyman, he said he is still “an advocate.”

In addition, he says he was born, raised, educated--bachelor’s, MBA, law degree--and has worked all his life in or near his Assembly district, a racially mixed area that takes in Baldwin Hills and the Crenshaw district as well as Culver City and a section of the Fairfax district. “I am my district,” Murray said.

And he has been around politics since childhood. His late mother was active in the state Parent-Teacher Assn. His father, Willard Murray, preceded him in the Assembly by six years, and both served in 1995 and 1996.

A political dynasty, however, was not to be. The elder Murray, forced out of the Assembly by term limits, lost a congressional primary last year. Melinda Murray, a deputy Los Angeles County prosecutor, also failed last year in a run for an Assembly seat, despite more than $100,000 she received in transferred campaign funds from brother Kevin.

Other low points last year included publicity when Murray became exasperated with a colleague for making, in Murray’s opinion, a convoluted argument against affirmative action. Murray called Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico) an “[expletive] moron” at a public hearing.

He has taken flak for taxpayer-paid trips abroad and, this month, for inviting lobbyists representing transportation interests to a no-host dinner costing $76 a head at an upscale Sacramento restaurant.

The gathering was legal under the new Proposition 208 campaign finance law, said Ruth Holton, director of California Common Cause, but still let lobbyists who could afford the tab “buy access.”

Replied Murray: “Where was I supposed to hold it, at McDonald’s?”

This year, he said, it will be the conservatives’ turn to rail at him.

Murray has scheduled an Assembly Transportation Committee hearing for Friday in Los Angeles to challenge the legality of Gov. Pete Wilson’s 1995 order removing gender and ethnicity as criteria in awarding Caltrans contracts.

One of his goals, Murray said, has been to expand the horizons of black businesses. Wilson’s Caltrans order presents one more roadblock, he believes.

He plans to call a town meeting, with California Chief Justice Ronald M. George participating, to explore bias against minorities in the criminal justice system.

Racial stereotypes persist, he said, as he can testify.

At a Macy’s store, a white customer asked him to ring up a purchase; at a Los Angeles restaurant, he said, white diners handed him their parking slips.

In the Legislature, where Murray is widely regarded as a quick study on complex concepts, there are nevertheless lobbyists who assume that “there are things too arcane for me and I won’t get it.”

“My family is college-educated three generations back. My parents stayed married,” Murray said. By his accomplishments, “I have done everything to be accepted into the club and yet I am not. What people see is my color.”

He would rather have them see a complex individual.

For the entertainment industry, he is pro-business.

On complex issues such as high-definition TV or digital video discs, said Hope Boonshaft, a vice president with Sony Pictures Entertainment of Culver City, only Murray “takes the time to ask the questions, come to the studio and stay on top.”

Murray can also be solidly pro-labor; he called the governor “Pharaoh Wilson” for workplace edicts he says hurt employees.

Along with the show-biz connections and the 1995 black Corvette he drives--paid for in part by his legislator’s monthly $400 car allowance--there is also the man sitting alone in movie houses, a long-standing habit, a diet Coke in hand.

The onetime Hollywood operator, it turns out, neither drinks alcohol, smokes nor takes coffee.

Of his antics on the Assembly floor with female Assembly members, usually confined to Los Angeles-area Democrats, he admitted to a lack of “statesmanlike reserve” that he has been told is not always welcome. “It’s just a way I have of releasing some of the stress.”

Most seem to consider him harmless--even in the case of the quip aimed recently at Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), the Legislature’s first openly gay member.

“If anybody can turn you, baby, I can,” Murray said, giving her a squeeze.

It was OK, she said later--part of what goes on in a “loving family.”