The bright spotlight of the Los Angeles mayor's race has attracted a cast of nationally known political consultants, including strategists who played key roles in the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean, Richard Gephardt, Wesley Clark and Al Gore.
The contest will also be a rematch for local political tacticians who went toe-to-toe in the 2001 mayoral election, one of the costliest and hardest-fought in city history.
"These are the same hired guns as last time," said Joel Kotkin, an urban historian and fellow at the New American Foundation. "They are gunfighters. They are people you hire to win an election by destroying other people."
The caliber of the political consultants has a lot to do with the high-profile nature of the race for Los Angeles mayor, occurring in an environment flush with money during what is otherwise an off year in politics.
Mayor James K. Hahn faces challenges from four major opponents: state Sen. Richard Alarcon, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and City Councilmen Antonio Villaraigosa and Bernard C. Parks.
Hahn returns with a team led by two veterans going for their third mayoral win in a row, including their work to reelect Republican Richard Riordan in 1997. Villaraigosa's team, which lost a runoff to Hahn's four years ago, is back to avenge Hahn's use of a controversial attack ad that the Villaraigosa forces partly blame for their loss.
Hertzberg has brought in the political guru behind Dean's meteoric -- if failed -- presidential campaign, and Parks' team includes a strategist who helped make Clark briefly a presidential contender.
By the time the race is over, the top five mayoral candidates are expected to have spent almost $15 million, much of it on strategists and media experts. The election is on March 8; if no one candidate reaches more than 50%, a runoff will be held in May.
"With the exception of New York, Los Angeles is the only city that attracts this kind of national talent," said political strategist Dan Schnur, who is not involved in the mayor's race.
If campaign consultants are, as Kotkin said, hired guns, then Bill Carrick is the one all the others want to shoot down.
Before running Hahn's 2001 campaign, Carrick was a strategist for Hahn's successful bids for city attorney in 1993 and 1997, and Riordan's mayoral reelection in 1997. Hahn's unpaid campaign chairman, attorney Bill Wardlaw, worked with lead consultant Carrick on the last two mayoral wins.
