The Council District 2 vacancy created by the election of ex-Council Member Wendy Greuel in March's election brings us 10 candidates for her former position.
Don't expect much change if CHRIS ESSEL, tagged as a carpet bagger who has not shown much knowledge of the CD-2 issues so far in the candidate forums, and ducked the radio forum on Keven James' show last week, also missed by Assemblyman Paul Krekorian who initially missed this because the Assembly was in session, later acknowledging it was not. ESSEL is a mayor's agent in my view, useless to CD-2 interests and dangerous if she's rubber-stamping TONY'S views in City Council meetings- like what you have now.
PAUL KREKORIAN is part of the career politician contingent who look for one postion after another to stay in any office. Pay for the Council is $178,00-plus per year (I earlier said incorrectly that it was $176,000.00 per year) plus about another $100,000.00 of benefits attached to the office.
The third BIG candidate is TAMAR GALATZIN, City Attorney AND LAUSD Board of Education member. She is doing well as a Board member, but I do not see a benefit if she leaves that job. A new election for another persson, also likely to be backed by the Mayor, as was GALATZIN, but diverges now and then from VILLARAIGOSA's desired actions. She would not be the best for the CD-2 interests although she's a good politician and speaks very well.
The GRASSROOTS candidates supply lots of variety among the spectrum of challengers.
DAVID "ZUMA DOGG" SALTSBURG has been continually involved in the city business and still is my choice. But I can't vote there, being in CD-14 with JOSE HUIZAR, an ally of the Mayor, who supported JOSE over the others to take office after TONY left us in CD-14 as Council Member to run for Mayor. That move was a preview of his self-centered ambitions overriding concern for constituents. SALTSBURG has learned what's going on at city hall where they don't like him for butting into their business and revealing informatin, but he's exposed a lot of their practices and showed that you can come to city hall and confront these guys (and women) on their lies. He's complained about special event waivers wasting money for years and Alarcon was so angry at the council voting changes that he said "Zuma Dogg should not be dictating city policy." Alarcon was so bitter while himself being so sneaky and continually sarcastic towards persons with opposing views.
Many more people are becoming clued in by SALTSBURG'S continuous presence at Council Meetings to the shady side of our representatives. Saltsburg translates things that are buried in legalese and "code" to show what's going on at the hands of the Council Members, and that's encouraged more involvement and promotes understanding of the maneuvers that city hall tries to slip by the public.
TODAY'S STORY IN THE TIMES.
From the L.A. Now section online,
"L.A. council candidate gets TV ad support from Assembly colleague as competitor cries foul," September 17, 2009 - Maeve Reston ,
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/la-council-candidate-gets-tv-ad-support-from-assembly-colleague-as-competitor-cries-foul.html This shows some big money coming from Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar) who spent $15,000.00 for a t.v. ad airing in the Valley that praises PAUL KREKORIAN, the money coming from Fuentes own campaign funds, as Fuentes says he was trying to show what a good job Krekorian has done. He did not specifically endorse or mention CD-2's election that barely keeps him on the legal side of the campaign funding rules.
MAYOR SAM'S BLOG also reference this with some commentary, too.
http://www.mayorsam.blogspot.com/ "Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes gives "Monetary Thanks" to CD 2 Council Candidate, err, Assemblyman Paul Krekorian." Thursday, September 17, 2009. The comments there tell you what you already may know or should know, that you can't trust these guys with lots of money to do things for anything but themselves first- and maybe think about you when it's election time somewhere down the road. Read the comments- remember that some of those come from Krekorian's supporters and staff, anonymously posting.
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