Top Campaign Strategist Given Key City Hall Role : Government: Political veteran Bill Wardlaw will head transition team. He guided the mayoral campaign.

Bill Wardlaw, the Ultimate Friend of Dick, has suddenly been catapulted to a position of extreme importance in City Hall as Mayor-elect Richard Riordan’s chief adviser.

Riordan has vast faith in Wardlaw, a wealthy corporate lawyer and political junkie, who planted the idea two years ago that Riordan should run for mayor, then made it happen.

It was Wardlaw who recruited the campaign staff that packaged the multimillionaire lawyer-businessman as the candidate “tough enough to turn L.A. around.”

And it was Wardlaw--a 46-year-old lifelong Democrat--who protected Riordan, a Republican political neophyte, from his own potentially serious missteps during the campaign.

On Wednesday, Riordan named his former partner in law and leveraged buyout firms to head his transition team. In that capacity, Wardlaw--a former supporter of Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and, later, Bill Clinton for President--will direct Riordan’s effort to assemble a staff, appoint commissioners and set priorities, the first of which is so clear that Wardlaw repeated it three times. “Public safety. Public safety. Public safety,” he said.

Wardlaw, who lives in Pasadena, insisted that he will have no formal role in the new Administration. But he is expected to be a key informal political adviser in his customary place: behind the scenes.

Some friends characterize him as an eminence grise --a power behind the throne of Riordan, who was also described for years as just such a behind-the-scenes player. But Wardlaw said the description of his role is overblown.

“If you know Dick Riordan, you know that’s not true,” Wardlaw said. “There’s no person pushing or pulling Dick Riordan. There’s one skill that I have that Dick doesn’t have and that is a knowledge of politics. Dick had been a generous contributor (to political campaigns) but never been actively involved.”

By contrast, Wardlaw, who said “I love politics,” has been involved in campaigns since he was 13, when he walked into the John F. Kennedy for President headquarters in Colton and was put to work licking stamps.

In 1964, he worked to elect President Lyndon Johnson. Two years later, he “walked more than I ever walked for any human being” for Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in a losing campaign for governor against Ronald Reagan. In 1970, he walked precincts again for Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Reagan, and in 1974, he served as an advance person for U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston. Two years after that, he was national operations director of Jerry Brown’s failed presidential campaign. And in 1980, Cranston made him his campaign manager.

Wardlaw served as campaign chairman for all of Ira Reiner’s campaigns for Los Angeles city attorney and district attorney in the 1980s, and was active--along with Riordan--in the 1985 bid to oust California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, upset that her anti-death penalty stance was undermining public faith in the judiciary.

Last year, he served as chairman of President Clinton’s California campaign, from which he recruited much of Riordan’s campaign staff.

A friend, Gilbert T. Ray of the powerful downtown law firm O’Melveny & Myers, where Wardlaw began his career, defined him politically as “liberal on the social issues and moderate on economic issues.”

Some people who meet Wardlaw for the first time come away remarking on his most striking physical feature: He may be the palest man in Los Angeles. A friend once told him, “Bill, if you fainted, your color would improve.”

He says his hobbies are reading magazines and newspapers and playing with his 3-year-old son, Bill Jr.

An extremely conservative dresser--fond of dark suits, white button-down shirts and black wingtip shoes--Wardlaw described himself Wednesday as “dull as the suit and the shirt, you know?” Then he laughed heartily at his own expense.

His experience and demeanor have combined to give him a reputation as a steady hand.

“The world’s full of smart people,” said Reiner, who was elected district attorney twice. “But Bill has a combination that you don’t find a lot and that’s brains and judgment. . . . He’s unflappable.”

Except, apparently, when it comes to Notre Dame football.

Wardlaw went to Whittier College and UCLA Law School, but friends say he has an extreme passion for Notre Dame, a school for which his mother reportedly prayed before every game.

“We used to go to Notre Dame-USC football games with him,” said Reiner’s wife, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne. “We finally stopped because his upset when USC was winning was so far out of proportion.”

He seems just as passionate in his loyalty to Riordan, with whom he shares a Roman Catholic heritage and a working relationship that goes back to 1984, when Riordan recruited him as managing partner for his law firm. Wardlaw also represented the firm’s most prestigious client, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

He left in 1988 to join Freeman & Spogli, a merchant banking company with which Riordan was also associated. He still is a partner in the firm, which does leveraged buyouts.

During the campaign, Wardlaw was Riordan’s damage controller.

When Riordan said in a televised debate that he was not involved in moving hundreds of Mattel Inc. jobs to Mexico, he quickly told reporters that Riordan had misspoken. Then he tried to put a favorable spin on the job exports, saying they were the kind of painful medicine the city’s leaders had to be willing to prescribe to revive the economy.

And when Riordan misspoke during another debate--revealing that he had been arrested twice for alcohol-related offenses, rather than three times--Wardlaw again stepped up. At a meeting requested by Times reporters, in part to clear up Riordan’s arrest record, Wardlaw acted as Riordan’s counselor, setting ground rules that called for the candidate to be silent while the reporters asked questions.

When Riordan began to speak anyway, Wardlaw gestured at him to be quiet. Then he, Riordan and other staff members conferred privately at length before Riordan gave any answers.

Unlike Riordan, whose parents were very wealthy, Wardlaw comes from a modest background. His father was a manager of a five-and-dime store, transferred by his company to Colton from Oroville, where Bill Wardlaw was born. His parents divorced when he was 4, and Wardlaw, an only child, was raised by his mother, who earned her living as a saleswoman at a Woolworth’s.

When Wardlaw, who is married to another lawyer, was asked if it would be accurate to describe him as a self-made millionaire, he seemed taken aback--perhaps concerned about how it would play.

“God has been very good to me,” he allowed. “I’ve been able to make some money, yes.”