Monthly Archives: February 2005

It wouldn’t be a race for Mayor in Los Angeles without someone playing the race card to their advantage, and it seems Councilmember Bernie Parks has finally decided to do so. Right on, Bernie! Stick it to the man!
Lagging in the polls with a campaign organization that’s more quaint than effective, he decided to lambaste a Hahn advertisement from 2001 as “racist” at a recent forum, and came to the defense of fellow candidate, Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa.
For those of you who have safely put out of your minds Campaign 2001, the ad criticized then Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa for sending letters out on behalf of a convicted drug dealer, asking for a pardon for the son of a politically connected local donor. Then-Speaker Bob Hertzberg also sent letter on behalf of said convict.
There’s no doubt that if you start talking about someone’s past actions, and that person’s not a white male, and you start making connections between them, drug dealers, and the like, it’s hard not to sound “racist.” But in this case, while I felt the imagery used was rather shocking, and probably not be what I would have chosen to do, I don’t know that it’s necessarily “racist.” To me it’d be racist if the charges were false, at the very least.
After all, then-Assemblyman Villaraigosa did write letters to the Clinton White House on behalf of Carlos Vignali. That’s not a made up charge – it is true. Just like the fact that then-Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg, and a host of other politicians did the same exact thing. (They, however have escaped ads with crack pipes in subsequent campaigns).
Heck, even Cardinal Roger Mahony and Sheriff Lee Baca sent letters in support of the pardon too.
Now, whether that’s relevant or not in a campaign for Mayor is for people to decide. There are probably a number of Angelenos who wouldn’t like the idea of a candidate, of any race, writing letters to President Clinton asking for a pardon of a convicted coke dealer. And there are probably just as many who could have decided to vote for or against Villaraigosa in 2001 for any one of a number of reasons too or could care less.
It’s easy to dismiss this as demagoguery – but then again, perhaps if the Villaraigosa campaign had responded differently to this situation four years ago, we’d be having a referendum on Mayor Villaraigsoa right now, instead of Mayor Hahn. Such is the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, four years after the fact.
In all fairness, it is very easy for outsiders, such as myself, to say that today, in 2005, but there may have been a perfectly logical reason for the way the 2001 campaign effort responded that made sense. Just because it didn’t work in that particular case is no indictment of the competence or integrity of Villaraigosa’s aides. Sometimes even the best plan, and the best message are derailed by things you can’t control.
Parks’ belated outrage demonstrates as much about his lagging standards, as it does for Mayor Hahn. When this controversy erupted in 2001, then Chief Parks was strangely silent on the issue. I searched desperately to find any instance where Chief Parks spoke out against this “racist” ad campaign.
I couldn’t find any.
I also couldn’t find any instances where Police Chief Parks spoke out in favor of asking for pardons for convicted drug dealers, or at least dismissed the idea as “no big deal” as he does here:
“The issue that a person writes a letter of recommendation, we do it all the time (emphasis added)  Parks said. “It is not even an issue that’s worthy of consideration in a campaign in my judgment.”
So it wasn’t an appeal for a pardon, just a “letter of recommendation” as if the guy was applying for an internship with his local Congressman? Hmm. I wonder if this is how Parks felt about the issue in 2001, or if this is a recent evolution of his views on the issue. And what does he mean by “we do it all the time”? Makes me a bit curious, to say the least!
Hearing Bernie Parks’ “outrage” today rings a little hollow. However, I began to realize why he was so quiet on this situation four years ago. Bernie Parks wanted to keep his job. Bernie Parks thought Hahn was going to win. Candidate Villaraigosa had criticized Parks’ performance as Chief during the 2001 campaign. Add it all up and you see why Parks was not about to raise any hackles about Jim Hahn’s 2001 campaign ads, regardless of how “racist” they were or were not.
For all of his thundering denunciations in 2005 of a Hahn campaign ad, at the moment in 2001, when he could have done something about this and made a difference as to who would win the election, Parks was silent.
That to me is as much of an indictment of his conduct four years ago on this “issue” as it is for Mayor Hahn.
PS: Salon.com had a piece about the campaign four years ago that reminds us of some of the dynamics of the 2001 campaign. What a difference four years makes.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

Last week the Los Angeles Times published a well publicized poll on the Mayoral race, just a few weeks from Election Day in March.
There wasn’t a lot to be surprised by, aside form the fact that Mayor Hahn’s approval ratings are lower than I’d expected. Mack Reed at did a nice short analysis of the numbers which is worth reading.
But the other story that came to mind for me was that the poll says, without actually saying it, that it’s time to consider moving Los Angeles municipal elections to coincide with the normal June Primary/November Election cycle most other elections abide by.
It may not seem obvious at first, but consider that in the poll, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg seems to be suffering from a lack of familiarity with voters. Now that’s not to say that they haven’t been trying – Bob’s been in the race for some time now, and he’s made a tremendous effort reaching voters since mid July.
Unfortunately, despite the spin from the campaign, he’s up against the fact that most people don’t know who he is, aside from his former constituents.
For all the hoo-hah about his website, most voters haven’t been looking for it, and the online ad campaigns done so early in the race were nice, but did more to reach the “blogosphere” and insiders than it did voters (Which is fine, but still, it’s only part of the game).
That’s why most of his time has been forced into raising money for TV ads, which started early, and will have to hit voters at the end of this month, along with all the other TV ads the other candidates can purchase in one of America’s most expensive media markets. (Even if you have 2.4 million dollars like Mayor Hahn, you still can’t do a saturation buy in L.A.)
So what? So, the fact is that Hertzberg’s situation is one that comes up not because he’s unpopular, necessarily, but because he’s not well-known to everyone in every corner of the city the way the Mayor, or 2001 candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, is, and he’s got a time/money crunch that makes his job that much harder.
He’s also not unique in the situation either – State Senator Richard Alarcon has even worse numbers, and is known by less people (and he’s less likely to raise the money needed to pay for a big TV buy than Hertzberg is). Bernie Parks is known by lots of people, and, well, maybe that’s why he is where he is.
Now, I’m not suggesting we need to change the election schedule to accommodate ex-legislators and their political ambitions. Far from it. Instead, I’d suggest that it’s time to have local elections match up with regular state elections, not just to save money, but also to have the election conducted when people are more likely to be paying attention.
This is an important election, and yet most people barely get a chance to hear much before they’re asked to fill in the oval for some guy running for mayor.
Whenever you hear someone say we need a “short election cycle” or that “elections take too long” as the patter of some “reform” effort, what they’re really saying is “don’t have elections that last too long so we can protect the people already there.”
I’d argue that in this case, we could go from a hyper-abbreviated cycle that serves no one well, to a normal cycle that would allow more time for everyone to make his or her case to the votes, and boost participation.
Certainly it would be nice to see incumbents sweat it out in a traditional campaign cycle, and allow for some real investigative reporting to develop on each of the candidates. Perhaps we’d even see some more coverage of competitive council races, such as the one being waged in the 11th Council District out here on the Westside.
Other cities have made changes to their local elections to increase interest, with various results. San Francisco, upon adopting district elections for their Board of Supervisors, moved their local elections to coincide with even-year elections in the fall, when more people are likely to vote.
That wasn’t popular with some special interests in town, nor was it necessarily popular with politicians, but it did have the effect of increasing interest in local elections.
Such a change may be difficult in L.A. But if we can think about big issues, like how to make LA a great city to live in, certainly we can also think about technocratic issues, like making election time relevant to Joe and Jane Average Voter.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com