Bob Hertzberg is a whirlwind of energy and a man of big ideas who believes he is just the candidate to shake L.A. out of what he perceives as its lethargy.

An attorney who plunged into politics and used both charm and political calculation to become Speaker of the state Assembly, Hertzberg has raised lots of money with a Web-based campaign and boldly proposed to break up the L.A. Unified School District. He also was the first to hit the airwaves with an ad showing him towering over L.A.

But is L.A. ready for Bob Hertzberg?

He’s still unknown to most voters and it’s anyone’s guess whether he rides to triumph like Richard Riordan did a dozen years ago or falls short like Steve Soboroff did four years ago.

“Hertzberg is presenting himself as the idea man in this race,” said Raphael Sonenshein, professor of political science at California State University Fullerton and a longtime observer of local politics. “He’s also displaying a sense of boundless energy. When you combine these two, it’s almost the polar opposite of Hahn’s style.”

Much will depend on whether Hertzberg can connect to voters outside his base in the San Fernando Valley. In a Los Angeles Times poll released earlier this month, before the ad campaign was launched, 21 percent of Valley voters said they would vote for Hertzberg. But overall his support was just 12 percent, putting him on a par with Councilman and former Police Chief Bernard Parks but well behind incumbent Mayor James Hahn and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa.

That will force Hertzberg to win over lots of voters within a short period of time, a challenge that the candidate appears eager to take on. It is that gregarious nature including those now trademark bear hugs and his work behind the scenes to forge delicate political compromises that has gotten him this far.

“Bob has the ability to see the big picture and yet understand every little detail in that picture. Usually, people can only do one or the other,” said attorney Scott Baugh, who was the Assembly Republican leader when Hertzberg, a Democrat, was Speaker.

Tackling big issues

That understanding comes from a voracious appetite for anything involving public policy, something that Hertzberg displayed during his childhood growing up with a father who was a prominent constitutional lawyer.

“He always wanted to tackle big issues,” said brother Gerry Hertzberg, who works as an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

Hertzberg, the third of five sons, was elected class president at Palm Springs High School in his junior and senior years. (The family moved to Palm Springs from L.A. because the local school district there was willing to accept his older brother Lyle, who suffered from cerebral palsy.)

He followed in his father’s footsteps and enrolled in the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco on his way to becoming an attorney himself. Upon graduation, Hertzberg and his father started their own law firm.

He remained in partnership with his father for six years, until the two split when the younger Hertzberg had wanted to shift towards business law. The 1985 breakup was far from amicable: the younger Hertzberg sued his father for some of the firm’s assets. The suit was settled after his father’s death two years later.

Hertzberg set up another law partnership briefly with his second wife, Karen Moskowitz, before forming yet another partnership with two other attorneys. By this time, however, practicing law was beginning to take a back seat to an interest in politics. “It wasn’t as fulfilling to him as public service,” said Gerry Hertzberg.

Beyond some minor early forays, such as driving around Mervyn Dymally during his successful campaign for lieutenant governor, Hertzberg’s first brush with the political world came with Molina, a client of his father who had been elected to the state Assembly. By the mid-1980s, he was fundraising for other young Latino candidates.

In those days, Hertzberg never hinted at running for office himself. “He believed in and promoted other people, drumming up the troops, providing technical and legal advice, always ready to provide that strategic thinking,” said Molina.

Knocking on doors

But his political involvement, which included campaigning for Antonio Villaraigosa for a 1994 state Assembly seat, started extending beyond that of a behind-the-scenes consultant. Two years later, he ran for office himself, targeting an open state Assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley and easily outraising his opponent, Francine Oschin, an aide to former L.A. City Councilman Hal Bernson.

When he got to the Assembly, Hertzberg quickly knocked on doors all over Sacramento, including business lobbyists. “They would say, ‘We’ve never seen a Democrat in here before,'” he recalled.

Hertzberg soon struck up a friendship with Dennis Cardoza, another business-minded Democrat from the Central Valley. Now a U.S. congressman, Cardoza recalled their first meeting when both had an appointment with then-Speaker Cruz Bustamante who had to cancel at the last minute. The two decided to go to dinner on their own, where Cardoza told Hertzberg about his troubled family business.

“Bob then picked up a napkin and in 20 minutes, sketched out a workout plan for the business that I’d been paying lawyers for months to do, to no avail,” Cardoza said.

Hertzberg and Cardoza gathered up some like-minded Democratic colleagues mostly from the Central Valley and formed what became known in Sacramento as the “mod squad.” This caucus of moderate Democrats, typically numbering about a dozen, blocked or weakened bills they considered to be anti-business. In an increasingly polarized Legislature, they became the “go-to” members for the business lobby.

Hertzberg also reached out to Republicans. Upon being named chairman of the Public Safety Committee, he helped Baugh draw up a bill that would survive his committee. “Helping a Republican craft a bill was unheard of,” Baugh said. “That made a real impression on me.”

There also was that energy one former colleague described him as “making the ‘Energizer bunny’ look tired.”

“When he got a hold of an issue, he was tenacious,” Cardoza said. “I can’t tell you how many times I was in his office at 4 a.m. working on an issue and one or the other of us would fall asleep. I would wake up and shuffle off to bed and he would go right back to work, saying he had just one more project to wrap up. I don’t know when the guy ever slept.”

Working with Republicans

While in Sacramento, Hertzberg had kept up his friendship with Villaraigosa, and after a few months, the two became roommates. When Villaraigosa sought to become speaker, Hertzberg helped round up votes for him. After the victory, Hertzberg was rewarded with the chairmanship of the powerful Rules Committee.

Hertzberg never gave up his ties with Republican lawmakers or business groups. In 1998, he helped break a logjam on a $9 billion school facilities bond by capping developer fees levied for new schools needed by residents of new tracts.

Those ties paid off when in 2000 Hertzberg ran for speaker and won on a unanimous vote. “The floor speech that I gave in support of Hertzberg as speaker was based on his ability to reach out to Republicans,” Baugh said.

But then came the transition and with it, a public falling out with Villaraigosa.

In the fast pace of term limits, Hertzberg wanted to assume his post right away, especially since he believed Villaraigosa would be distracted by his pending run for L.A. mayor. But Villaraigosa wanted to retain the speakership post until the end of his term in November.

In the end, the two grudgingly agreed to a compromise where Villaraigosa would hand over the reins to Hertzberg in April 2000, one year before the mayoral primary. By that time, their friendship had dissolved into bitter recriminations that can still be heard, though they have tried to patch things up over the last few months.

Six months into his new job, the feud became the least of Hertzberg’s problems. That’s when the state began reeling from a shortfall in energy supplies. While critics argue that both then-Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature were slow to become engaged in the developing crisis, Hertzberg ultimately became a crucial player in crafting a bailout package for the state’s utilities.

Meanwhile, Hertzberg faced a budget standoff as Republicans held out for nearly a month against the imposition of a quarter-cent sales tax increase triggered by falling state revenues. In the end, Hertzberg and Cardoza were able to peel off four Republicans.

While Hertzberg celebrated his victory against what he called “far right” Republican holdouts, his strategy was criticized in some circles for failing to react to plunging revenues with spending cuts. The argument: that the whopping $24 billion deficit in the following year’s budget might have been lessened had some cuts been made in 2001. Instead, the deal helped fuel the perception of a spendthrift Democratic power structure, and set the stage for the recall of Davis.

Boroughs proposal

Back in Hertzberg’s San Fernando Valley district, secession sentiment was brewing. Hertzberg, never a fan of breaking up Los Angeles, nonetheless agreed to carry legislation that took away the City Council’s power to block the placement of a secession measure on the ballot.

Once the measure did qualify, Hertzberg teamed up with new L.A. City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel to put forward a compromise plan to break up Los Angeles into New York-style boroughs. While the proposal generated a lot of interest among policy wonks, the council quickly slapped it down as City Hall girded for all-out war.

Hertzberg largely stayed out of the fray, focusing on the less glamorous matter of California’s water supply. Water agencies in Southern California were engaged in contentious negotiations with Imperial Valley farmers over how much water should go to urban areas. The state faced a Dec. 31, 2002 deadline to reach an agreement to lessen its use of Colorado River water or face a mandatory cutoff from the federal government.

Just as he was leaving office, Hertzberg offered himself as an impartial third party. “He came to the table fully understanding the issues and ready to move the ball forward,” said Ron Gastelum, now-retired chief executive of the Metropolitan Water District. “However, because he was no longer speaker, he was in no position to offer the one ingredient the deal needed to work: an infusion of state funds.”

With no additional funds to offset their economic losses and potential environmental damage, the Imperial Valley farmers rejected the compromise Hertzberg brokered and the federal government cut back California’s Colorado River allotment. The following year, Davis and the Legislature did agree to include the funding and an accord was ultimately signed.

“If he’s got a fault, it’s that he tries to tackle too many issues,” said one former colleague. “He thinks he can fix everything. And 90 percent of the time, he’s right, which in itself is pretty remarkable. But every once in a while, he just can’t get over that goal line.”

With no open seat in the state Senate available as his final Assembly term wound down, Hertzberg chose to return to the private sector. He joined the Los Angeles office of London-based law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw and became active in local business organizations, including the Valley Industry and Commerce Association and the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., which he chaired last year.

And he soon took on another assignment, one that could come back to haunt him during his mayoral bid: a $5,000-a-month consulting contract with public relations giant Fleishman Hillard. For the last 18 months, the St. Louis-based firm has been the subject of multiple investigations into alleged overbilling at local public agencies, including the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. Hertzberg says he never billed the city for any work he did on behalf of Fleishman and, so far, his name has not come up in connection with any of the ongoing local and federal investigations.

Child support suit

While Hertzberg long had toyed with the idea of running for mayor, Hahn for a time looked like he would cruise to re-election, so challenging him seemed out of the question. Then, in early 2004, the Hahn administration became embroiled in the “pay-to-play” investigation involving city contracts. When deputy mayor Troy Edwards and airport commissioner Ted Stein resigned last spring, Hertzberg believed Hahn was vulnerable and announced his candidacy in April.

Just as his campaign was getting off the ground, he faced an unexpected obstacle: a lawsuit from ex-wife Karen Moskowitz. She sought to block his entry into the race on grounds that if he won the mayoral post, his salary would decline and he would be unable to maintain his $9,800-a-month child support payments to their two teenage sons.

Two months later, a Superior Court Judge reduced the payments to $7,000 a month and set aside the lawsuit until after the election. (He is now married to his third wife, Cynthia Telles.)

Hertzberg has made an early splash with an online campaign, similar to the one used by Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. He also won the support of four Hahn commissioners, including Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP attorney Lisa Specht and developer Doug Ring, husband of City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski.

As the debates approached, Hertzberg sought to solidify his base of support in the San Fernando Valley by proposing to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District. While the mayor of Los Angeles has no official jurisdiction over the sprawling district and a Valley-led effort to break up the LAUSD fizzled in 2001 Hertzberg has stuck with the idea, though he has been reluctant to offer specifics.

Only after repeated media questioning did Hertzberg reveal that his plan called for the district to be whittled down to city limits, not broken up into mini-districts. He would not go so far as to break off the San Fernando Valley into a separate district.

“I’m a little troubled about the promise he’s making to break up the schools,” Molina said. “I’m not so sure that it’s the best thing to promise. If he gets in as mayor, it will be a really tough issue to see through. And there’s nothing worse than to tell voters you can do something and then are unable to deliver.”

Hertzberg has made headway with L.A.’s business leaders, who have generally been unimpressed with Hahn’s commitment to business and the economy. But as the primary election nears, Hertzberg’s challenge is to reach out to a broader cross-section of voters, especially outside the Valley. He’s touting a plan to stop road construction on city streets during rush hour, though that’s already a city policy. He also says the city can hire more police officers by freeing up funds within its existing budget.

But the battle is generally considered uphill, especially since Hertzberg has received little scrutiny from the media and hasn’t come under attack from other campaigns. Hahn has endured a barrage of such scrutiny over the past year as the “pay-to-play” contracting investigations have widened, and Villaraigosa drew fire from opponents during his 2001 campaign.

Even if Hertzberg manages to squeak into the runoff, he’s a long way from building the broad coalition he would need to win in May.

“You need more than just the Valley,” said political consultant Coby King. “The big question for Hertzberg right now is whether he can expand his base outside the Valley.”