Fundraising Prowess Has Hertzberg in Spotlight

Standing on the terrace of an immaculately landscaped Rancho Cordova home overlooking the American River outside Sacramento, Bob Hertzberg basked in the affection of former colleagues and collaborators.

Assembly members, state lobbyists, even the Sacramento County sheriff sipped wine, listened to the former Assembly speaker’s pitch and cut checks as big as $1,000 for Hertzberg’s attempt to unseat Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn.

In an eight-day stretch last month, Hertzberg also raised money in the Beverly Hills living room of real estate mogul Richard Ziman and at a fundraiser at the Northridge home of Republican Assemblyman Keith Richman.

In the early stages of the 2005 mayor’s race, no one has been pulling in donations like Hertz- berg. With more than $700,000 in the bank, he has rocketed ahead of the other candidates challenging Hahn in the March election. The mayor is expected to report today that he had raised $2 million through the end of June. All mayoral candidates must send their fundraising reports to the Los Angeles Ethics Commission by Monday.

But beyond trumpeting his growing war chest, Hertzberg also has become the first candidate in the race to use his fundraising to underscore key campaign messages.

The Democrat from Sherman Oaks is showing off onetime Hahn supporters who have decamped to his side to spotlight the incumbent’s weakness. He is focusing attention on donors such as his former colleagues in Sacramento to make the case that he is a politician who builds lasting relationships.

And even as he taps numerous wealthy donors, he is attempting to portray himself as a grass-roots candidate by building an interactive website that he hopes will help draw 10 times more donors than any other candidate gets.

“If history is any guide, they are going to try to go out and destroy us,” said Hertzberg campaign manager John Shallman, anticipating a fiercely negative political fight.

“Our view is that the best shield for that is to engage as many people as possible in this campaign so that our opponents won’t be able to take down Bob Hertzberg,” he said. “They will have to take down everyone.”

Making an early splash with campaign contributions is hardly a new political strategy.

Then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis separated himself from a crowded field of Democratic presidential contenders famously labeled “the seven dwarfs” in 1988 by tapping into a national network of Greek American donors.

And last year, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s remarkable success at raising millions from small donors on the Internet fueled media attention and propelled him into the role of front-runner.

Aggressive fundraising does not guarantee success; both Dukakis and Dean lost badly.

And although fundraising is an imperative for Hertzberg, who will have to advertise extensively to overcome his low name recognition, there are dangers for a candidate who is perceived as overly focused on money or beholden to wealthy donors.

“No politician wants to risk looking like Gray Davis,” said Jaime Regalado, a political scientist who heads the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

But in the initial stages of a campaign, fundraising momentum can give a candidate a big boost. “Long before the votes are cast, candidates break out of the field with money,” said USC law professor Susan Estrich, who managed Dukakis’ presidential campaign. “Particularly in a fragmented city like this, where you don’t have the political organizations that exist in a Boston or a Chicago ... candidates are going to use donations to show support.”

For Hertzberg, that has meant a frenetic schedule of fundraisers that have tapped Ziman, Richman and Nancy Daly Riordan, wife of the former mayor, as well as legislative staffers who worked for Hertzberg when he was Assembly speaker from 2000 to 2002. Hertzberg represented the San Fernando Valley in the Assembly for six years.

He has highlighted supporters such as Ziman, who backed Hahn in the 2001 election.

And in June, Hertzberg’s campaign also celebrated the defections of West Los Angeles developer Doug Ring and attorney Lisa Specht, two major fundraisers who served on city commissions for Hahn but resigned to raise money for Hertzberg.

Last month, Hertzberg brought together a different group of supporters at a Mexican restaurant near the state Capitol where dozens of current and former staffers came to chip in a few dollars each for his campaign and reminisce about late nights trying to steer California out of the crippling energy crisis in the summer of 2001.

“The team,” Hertzberg howled as he charged into the restaurant to rhythmic applause. He worked his way around the place, enveloping supporters in his trademark bear hugs, as his advisors crowed over the loyalty of the donors who came to support Hertzberg two years after he left state government.

At Ziman’s home in Beverly Hills a week later, the scene was more subdued, but many guests also shared stories of working with Hertzberg, including his personal lawyer and a business owner who said Hertzberg helped him clear up a workers’ compensation insurance problem so the firm wouldn’t have to lay off workers.

“I know that all politics is personal,” Hertzberg said recently in a corner booth at Art’s Delicatessen in Studio City.

Minutes later, the proprietor approached Hertzberg, an old acquaintance, with an offer to hold a fundraising event for him. The two men agreed that it should be for supporters likely to contribute less than those at the Ziman mansion.

Besides shuttling from mansion to mansion, Hertzberg’s campaign also is relying heavily on Web-based fundraising to send another message.

The candidate has a website that allows supporters to make contributions and even sign up to hold events for the campaign.

Shallman said the campaign so far has received more than 200 donations from the site. It anticipates pulling in thousands more before next year’s election, most of them in small amounts.

For candidates such as Dean, the Internet was not only a fundraising bonanza; it helped create a Web-based movement behind the campaign and gave grass-roots credibility.

“Dean used his website as a real hub. It really drew people into the campaign, and people responded to that,” said Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University.

Hertzberg said he wants to do the same. And he has hired Dean’s former campaign manager and Internet campaigning pioneer, Joe Trippi, to work on his campaign.

“Using the Internet, using e-mails, using a very personal kind of campaign, will allow me to break through and create a new kind of politics,” Hertzberg said.