Former Assemblyman Paul Koretz is walking precincts and canvassing neighborhood street fairs rather early for the Los Angeles City Council seat he hopes to win next spring.

“I grew up in the 5th council district for 20 years,” Koretz said.

The city council bid is the latest chapter in a political career so L.A.-centric that it would make Raymond Chandler proud. Koretz, 53, spent six years as an assemblyman in the 42nd District on L.A.’s Westside. Before that the eternal Democrat was one of the founding fathers of the unincorporated City of West Hollywood, where he spent a dozen years as a WeHo councilman and mayor before his 2000-2006 Assembly stint.  

By March 3, 2009, he hopes to lock up the 5th District seat currently held by L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss, who next year wants to take over for termed-out L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The 5th covers L.A.’s entertainment industry neighborhoods such as Encino, Brentwood and Hancock Park, plus the Orthodox Jewish enclave Fairfax District and the San Fernando Valley’s land of show runners, Studio City.

Koretz’s early opposition is real estate attorney Ron Galperin, a Democratic Party convention Clinton alternate delegate from U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman’s 30th District.  Like many L.A. politicians, Koretz does not miss Sacramento’s insular political culture and prefers one-on-one encounters with constituents like those he met passing out campaign pamphlets at last Sunday’s Sherman Oaks street fair.

“You’re so far removed when you’re in Sacramento four days a week, five days a week,” he said. “It’s very different from city government.”

Due to the love-him-or-hate-him reputation of the 5th District’s incumbent, Koretz is not aggressively seeking a Jack Weiss endorsement. But Koretz is also staying clear of voters’ mixed feelings and not painting himself as a Weiss alternative; in typical Koretz fashion, he keeps it polite, saying, “People have a wide variety of opinions about Jack.”

Koretz’s post-Assembly career includes serving on the state’s podiatric medicine board and also being the Western regional interim executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee. He leaves the JLC post in June and then will campaign full-time for the 5th District seat, with such salary-free electioneering supported by savings and his wife’s Kaiser Permanente public affairs job salary.

“I’ve set aside the money from my personal finances to support myself and my family through the end of the election,” he said.