Voters send message to Sacramento, City Hall

The voters in yesterday's special election rejected the tax proposals of Prop. 1A through 1E and approved the Prop. 1F pay-hold on legislators for not meeting budget deadlines (not really a major obstacle for to them to still miss the deadline and get their money). The message was a change from a history in constant approvals of lawmakers' requests for more money- enough is too much, it seems. They have not handled public spending well, and their solution shows the problems continue.

At the L.A. city level, at least Rocky Delgadillo's successor will be a definite and significant improvement with Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich winning the election over the Villaraigosa "yes-man," City Council Member Jack Weiss, who is leaving the CD-5 office at the end of June. July 1 will be the start of terms for the recently elected officeholders.

In CD-5, it appears the winner is Paul Koretz over David Vahedi to take over from Jack Weiss. Vahedi was the preferred choice, with closer experience at the neighborhood level, and Paul Koretz is a career politician, but a fairly productive one, and a definite improvement over Weiss' years as CM.

The 32nd Congressional District seat vacated by Hilda Solis' appointment to the Obama cabinet post in the Dept. of Labor did not produce an over-50% majority vote for any single candidate, but Judy Chu beat Gil Cedillo who will return to the state senate to fill out his term that ends next year at the same time as Gov. Swartzenegger. She faces Betty Tom Chu, (R) and a Libertarian party candidate for a July runoff to settle this. The L.A. Times reports on this,
"Chu defeats Cedillo in 32nd Congressional District," by Jean Merl, May 20, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-local20-2009may20,0,6009641.story - here's what's next, from that story,

There will be a runoff July 14 among the top vote-getters from each of the
parties in the race. Because the district is strongly Democratic, however, it is
widely expected that the seat ultimately will go to the Democrat. The seat, one
of the few area elected offices without term limits, opened unexpectedly with
the appointment of Hilda Solis as U.S. labor secretary.

At least Gil Cedillo will stay out of Washington and away from that scene as a temptation to continue his penchant for lavish spending. He may find that constituents are not so impressed to see their representative being so comfortable while the economy keeps them busy with keeping jobs and housing and such things without the benefit Cedillo has of "campaign donors" "showing their appreciation" with cash. Meanwhile, Ed Reyes and the rest of the hopefuls for the state senate will have to wait for the next opening to engage again in the "musical chairs" game of continuing in a public office.