"Pension officer resigns after Weiss fundraiser; Mayoral appointee Kelly Candaele quits after inquiries about his involvement in a fundraiser for city attorney candidate Jack Weiss." By David Zahniser, April 29, 2009.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pension29-2009apr29,0,2196014.story Kelly Candaele is listed as one of the hosts of the event. City law bars commissioners and board appointees from having their names on fundraising invitations.
Roughly four hours after The Times asked Villaraigosa's office about the event,
Candaele submitted his resignation letter, saying he had put his name on the
invitation by mistake. "Although I did not raise or contribute any political
funds, this is inconsistent with the ethics pledge I signed when appointed to
serve," he wrote.
Jack Weiss, facing the runoff election May 19th against Carmen Trutanich, was in a financially comfortable position during the campaign for the March 3 election, raising well over a million dollars. This was shown early in that campaign, reported in the L.A. Times, by Phil Willon and Maeve Reston on January 13, 2009. "Antonio Villaraigosa, Jack Weiss and Wendy Greuel campaigns rake in funds; Los Angeles' mayor and two City Council members outpace opponents in 2008 fundraising. Villaraigosa is running for reelection, Weiss for city attorney and Greuel for city controller." http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/13/local/me-cityelex13
All candidates for city office, including those running for City Council, were required to file reports Monday detailing contributions collected during the three-month period ending Dec. 31 and totals for 2008. Candidates had until midnight to file, so not all reports were available Monday evening.
In the city attorney's race, Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss led his top rival more than 2 to 1 in fundraising. Weiss, whose campaign began in 2007 and is chaired by Villaraigosa, reported more than $1 million in cash on hand after raising $970,478 in 2008
That drive for campaign funding this time around appears to have pushed the edge on ethics and in this case overstepped the limits. Since Antonio is running for Governor, barring some other revelation of personal or political failing, this is not anything he can have connected to him in even the most remote manner to will weigh down that campaign and give more canon fodder to opponents. Since Kelly Candaele was an appointee of Mayor Villlaraigosa, a resignation was inevitable once the revelation was made.
Jack Weiss is trying not got get more negatives on his side while he works hard for ways to spin his past record to a positive. It's all beginning to be a big job and besides not being good for a candidate for office, it's especially a gloomy omen when you consider that the office is "City Attorney," the top city enforcer in the law.
Weiss, who is running to replace City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo in the May 19 election, will give back roughly $20,000 raised from Monday's event, said his campaign consultant Ace Smith. "Jack Weiss believes that his campaign must be held to the highest standards," Smith said in a statement.It's hard to see all this as a simple mistake there's a lot that I agree with in the criticism and the running critique of the story that's presented in a blog posting by Zuma Dogg on his "L.A. Daily Blog" thread item, "Villaraigosa's PENSION APPOINTEE Steps Down Over JACK WEISS CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISER (Too Good To Be True!) on Tuesday, April 28, right after this story broke last week. Zuma Dogg has a few loud critics but they cannot ignore the fact that there is a huge amount of information that is not seen elsewhere that is correct and that others don't cover a lot that should be big news stories.
As a complete aside, I should also add that a lot of bloggers, nearly all of whom post as "anonymous," have a connection with the subjects of ZD's criticism and use the blogs to plant the retorts in defense of their jobs, their boss's jobs and their own bias. The majority of those are personal attacks and not addressing topics on the merits, if you want to spend any time reading a lot of such comments in Mayor Sam's Blog, http://www.mayorsam.blogspot.com/ In blog comment postings, lots are written as separate comments, but by the same persons or groups of persons to make it look like "everyone" is saying the same opinion. This does not happen just for Zuma Dogg, but for any topic that may be critical of a group or position, but ZD writes so much, he's the biggest target for most of it, being criticized generally or specifically in that same ascerbic style that is rarely productive of any ideas or solutions to the topic. A lot just want him to quit, even though that would end their recreation. It would keep a lot of things from being mentioned, and like in the L.A. Times' inquiry into the campaigning by the appointee, can lead to bad outcomes for those subjects.
There's so much to criticize in the Weiss operation, including the candidate himself, the most important shortcoming. Weiss' campaign has already achieved the unusual action of having an endorsement taken back by a prominent official. Sheriff Lee Baca did that and issued a statement scolding Weiss for how he's run his campaign, including noting the absence of "fairness," a quality that causes concern for electing one to the ofifce of City Attorney.
There's always more to see about Jack Weiss and why he should not be elected as City Attorney. The continued events in the campaign just bring out more to see. He was poor as council member and now a completely wrong person for the City Attorney's office. Undoubtedly, there will be more to come in the campaign and so much backfires on Weiss that I can't predict what will happen next, only that it won't be good for Jack.
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