Election time will be here in just over one month. Compared to the presidential elections there’s not been much of any widespread news about the race for Mayor of the City of Los Angeles. That was the case until today when Steve Lopez, columnist for the L.A. TIMES wrote in his column about the fact that the mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has refused to participate in any debates with challengers for the office.
Lopez’ column is the first real commentary on Walter Moore, the candidate for mayor who, of all challengers, has raised the most money for campaign funding, over $200,000.00, but no one really knows ABOUT him or any of the other candidates where the general public is concerned. (Moore's website: http://web.mac.com/waltermoore/WalterMooreForMayor/Home.html )
Lopez mentions only Moore and not any of the others, including Zuma Dogg, a friend who I think has learned a lot from attending city council meetings for well over 2 years. ZD has had better attendance at the 3 meetings per week than some council members, many of whom wind up missing important matters, and many just missing a lot of meetings, like Jack Weiss, a council member running for City Attorney.
My opinion has always been that if you want the vote of the public, then you should earn it and not just expect it. Antonio Villaraigosa has become so smug in his job as mayor, a job he has done very poorly, that is, when he decides to stay in the city instead of campaign for Hillary Clinton for President, and then shift to Obama when Hillary ended her attempt. Also part of the road trip was Antonio’s need to travel around the country to raise campaign funds for this election. It’s kind of funny that he’s collecting money to be reelected as mayor of a city that these donors don’t even live in.
Antonio’s focus on getting as much money as he can to pay for ads to convince people he’s great and he’s working for you all the time, things that are completely unsupported by any facts and that would actually or “should” actually cause an uprising of voters against him.
In Los Angeles, you don’t have a very informed body of voters. Campaign propaganda gets to be a very effective tool when reach people who do not bother to look beyond the advertising. When you get your news from television as your main source, it’s like getting the TMZ version of life, more than any real news. Listening to radio will do more to inform but even radio news is not evenly available.
This all leaves the voter to rely heavily on what comes to him or her by the one-sided presentations typical of political ads. Tony Villaraigosa depends on this condition and the campaign funds he raised while traveling out of L.A. amount to over $3,000,000 (that’s right, THREE MILLION DOLLARS, to be spent to keep him in office. Like I said, don’t expect there to be anything objective in those ads. Honesty is not part of the political gain.
Tony wants to win and he is so sure of it that he will just skip any debates and FORGET ABOUT VOTERS as usual until he needs them.
Tony wants to win and he is so sure of it that he will just skip any debates and FORGET ABOUT VOTERS as usual until he needs them.
VOTERS deserve some respect from a candidate- he’s asking US for our vote, we are asking HIM for his approval. THIS IS RIGHT WHERE IT’S ALL TURNED AROUND and there is complete and utter contempt the voters, especially regarding their needs in terms of honesty and some truth. With Mayor Tony, that’s asking too much. Debating ANYONE for him would show the flaws he has to hide. Someone doing a good job would gladly entertain challenges and be able to HANDLE QUESTIONS with some confidence, not trickery and playing out a strategy to cover up things.
The Mayor has become such a publicity whore that he finds his way to tragedies in the news. Anywhere there are cameras clicking or tape rolling is where you can expect to see the Mayor, even if he really has no legitimate function or business to make his presence necessary at the scene. Sometimes his presence entirely inappropriate, but Tony cares only about getting his face on camera and more publicity to try to cover up the true picture. Remember the recent train crash that happened in Chatsworth? There was Tony to give us the updates on what was happening as if he were the news reporter there.
The head safety official working on the scene normally handles this. In this case, the City Fire Chief was the man on that job, but Tony actually bumped him out to take over at the mike, while he also put on a fire fighter's yellow coat that might make you think he was doing some of the rescue work.
It’s all for appearances, like a magic act that tricks you into believing something that isn’t really happening like it first looked to you. That’s Tony’s entire administration of the past, coming up on 4 years. It was 4 years of planning for the next election and the next political moves, when you could see all the while that the city was being run on auto pilot, with the Council doing most of the decisions for the mayor to just come by and approve when he was in town.
And now, after the Presidential election is done and his own race is rapidly approaching, the mayor is staying around longer inside the city limits, but he still cannot stay in his city hall office. Tony has to find those camera lenses for his own performances. The family of 7 that was killed by the father in Wilmington was completely shocking and a horrible event, but Tony found that HE was NEEDED there on the scene. It wasn’t the police and counselors and other emergency responders on the scene who were important, only Tony. The EVENT, with the loss of the lives of an entire family ws not bad enough. It was NEWS, so that was enough for Tony to do this ghoulish appearance, saying NOTHING THAT WE DIDN’T ALREADY THINK AND SHOWING NO RESPECT for the sadness of the friends and family of the deceased. But Tony got his face in the cameras to show us HE’S important.
I forgot for a moment that the L.A. Weekly’s story has it right, “Antonio Villaraigosa, the All-About-Me Mayor” who works 11% of the time on real city business and spend 89% traveling, attending fundraisers and other personal matters, all documented in the story which based it’s calculations on the calendars that it was entitled to receive according to the law. http://www.laweekly.com/2008-09-11/news/the-all-about-me-mayor/
Well, as Steve Lopez’ column says, maybe Tony will win, but aren’t the citizens entitled to hearing him in a debate for the voters of Los Angeles to know what there is from each Moore and Villaraigosa to give to voters? Lopez thinks it’s pretty arrogant of Tony to refuse to present any kind of information to voters that he could give in a debate.
I say that Tony should debate Moore and include the other challengers, too. Most of them are only known to a few people and Zuma Dogg is one of the grass roots challengers who got way over the 500 valid petition signatures almost entirely by himself in order to qualify to be on the March 3 ballot. It worked well for him so that he could personally hear from people as to what they thought about matter's including the city's needs and conditions.
David Hernandez, another candidate, is an activist on the ballot as well, and was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that tried to have the winning city ballot measure overturned by the court to cancel the EXTENSION of the term limits to three terms from two, a measure that the City Council intentionally and dishonestly described as “limiting” as in shortening, not “extending the limits” like it actually did. It was all done by them to keep their jobs longer, and 5 of them benefited from this voter approval that I call a voter deception.
Hernandez recently returned to the appellate court to hear the decision. The court there rejected his challenge that relied on the actions being in violation of the city charter, saying that while it could not be done by the state government, the 2-in-1 law was not prohibited specifically by the city's charter.
So if you think that Tony is such a great individual, just think about why Tony could only could get hurt and not helped from being in a debate- maybe something might come out such as "the truth." That's a threat to his image; “the truth” about what he’s done and what he’s not done.
Of course the Mayor is not into truth- that’s his enemy. I just said that the campaign money will pay for ads on TV and radio. And the money will give you those very fine glossy brochures in your mail that should include lots of the pictures that Tony’s generated from all his necessary appearances. I see Tony proclaiming, “I’m the pothole king” and figure that it’s all that matters to him, the publicity. It brings to mind the Sit’N’Sleep set of commercials where the owner “Larry” is always doing something to sell more mattresses and making deals that make his accountant say, “You’re killing me, Larry.” Tony is the huckster, hustling the voters for something he’s shown he does not deserve. He needs to be the “One-Term Mayor.”
One other item missing from Tony's election brochure and website this year will be the same family man style of photos he used last time around. We all know why that is the case. Nice job, Mayor.
See the Steve Lopez column online (linked at the top of this item) in the "California" section of the L.A. TIMES, and make your selection online to VOTE on your opinion, Should Tony debate? Most responders are saying “Yes”
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