Bill Boyarsky

Feuer, Zine lead in poll that shows a discontented L.A.

2013-05-13T23:44:00Z

The latest poll, which finds Dennis Zine ahead in the controller’s race and Mike Feuer leading for city attorney, also shows that half the voters don’t think Los Angeles is heading in the right direction. Such negativity could affect the most important factor in the election, turnout.

A poll of 674 likely voters by the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State University, Los Angeles, shows Councilman Zine leading Ron Galperin 33 percent to 18 percent and Feuer ahead of Carmen Trutanich, the incumbent, 35 percent to 24 percent.

What’s really interesting about the poll is its breakdown of voters’ attitudes. These will be crucial in the days before the May 21 election. With a turnout expected to be somewhere around 25 percent, above the primary but still low, the campaigns are targeting their appeals to various ethnic groups and geographical areas—and to specific voters. With today’s technology, campaigns know the voting history, consumer preferences, gender, viewing habits and much more about voters. In fact, they probably know what voters had for Mother’s Day brunch. Such information shapes campaigning by telephone, mail and visits to homes.

A total of 45 percent of whites say the city is headed in the wrong direction. Blacks are even more pessimistic. Latinos, on the other hand, said the city is going in the right direction by 44 percent to 23 percent. Latinos also gave Latino Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a 62 percent favorable job approval rating, above that of other groups. The survey did not count enough members of other ethnic groups for them to be included in the survey.

Perhaps the positive feelings about L.A. among Latinos will help mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, who was leading City Controller Wendy Greuel among Latinos, 48 percent to 36 percent in the mayoral portion of the survey released last week. He’s no doubt hoping that such good feelings add up to good turnout of Latino voters. Greuel and Garcetti were even in the mayoral survey.

Garcetti is also leading Greuel among voters making $40,000 a year or more. With voting increasing as income goes up, these working class, middle class and affluent voters probably are also on the Garcetti list of voters to target.

Also interesting were the voters’ take on the most important issues facing the city, which no doubt will shape the candidates’ political messages. Crime, 19 percent, ranked highest, followed by the city budget, 17 percent, education, 16 percent and traffic, 11 percent.

Mayoral candidates hide behind their kids as they avoid hot school issues

2013-05-08T23:40:28Z

Only someone intrigued by the finer points of the politics of education could have figured out the differences between the overly cautious mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel at their debate Tuesday.

The debate, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in mid-Wilshire, was presented by public radio station KCRW and Zocalo, the non-profit group that, among other projects, encourages discussion of public policy matters. Moderator Warren Olney of KCRW did a fine job of moving the debate along and keeping the competitors on point.

Education was a top issue on the agenda. As Olney pointed out, neither the mayor nor the city council have jurisdiction over the public schools. That task belongs to the Los Angeles Unified School District and its elected board. But there are few matters more important to L.A. Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa tried to shape policy by raising money to elect school board candidates who favor charter schools, making public teacher evaluations and relaxing teacher seniority protections. They considered themselves reformers, a description denounced by the teachers union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Each of them found themselves deeply involved in public school controversy.

Greuel said she endorsed Antonio Sanchez, Villaraigosa’s choice, for the school board on Election Day, May 21. Garcetti said he hasn’t endorsed and won’t until he talks to the candidates. Assuming Sanchez favors the Villaraigosa agenda, Greuel has put herself in the so-called reform camp. But as Hillel Aaron wrote on the LA School Report website, “in general, both candidates sounded closer to the ‘school reform’ end of the ideological spectrum. Garcetti, who has been endorsed by UTLA, came out perhaps a millimeter or so more towards the pro-teacher end of the spectrum, if only in tone.”

The afternoon seemed to leave spectators unsatisfied. The reporters, after covering so many of these debates, seem sick of them. But I, as an occasional visitor, remain intrigued by this face-to-face part of the contest.

It was interesting, for example, to see how Greuel has improved. She speaks with more clarity and force than when she started her campaign for mayor and has ditched her city hall jargon. Garcetti is even smoother than when he began, more practiced, better able to insert at least a small amount of humor. On the down side, both of them annoyingly talk about their kids at great length as if they think parenthood makes them more human and appealing to voters.

Talking about their kids also gives them cover to duck tough questions about education. Still unknown is whether they will take the political risks and forcefully inject themselves in the controversial details of the debate over L.A. schools as did Riordan and Villaraigosa. That’s high-risk behavior, foreign to two decidedly low-risk candidates.

Winning the long fight to fund Bradley documentary

2013-05-06T21:39:39Z

Having watched filmmakers Lyn Goldfarb and Alison Sotomayor scramble so hard for funding for a documentary on the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, I was glad to see, as I returned from vacation, that they have received a $500,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant that will allow them to finish the project by next January.

They certainly exemplified the Bradley motto of “Never Give Up” as they approached foundations, surviving members of the old Bradley crew, rich people, any one or any organization potentially willing to get behind the documentary, “Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race.”

After talking to them and being interviewed for the documentary, I think the project will delve into aspects of Bradley’s career that are being forgotten as the years pass.

Bradley, who served from 1973 to 1993, was Los Angeles’ only African American mayor. He had many accomplishments in those 20 years, including the start of the revival of downtown Los Angeles, beginning the rail transit system and bringing the 1984 Olympics to Los Angeles. Perhaps his most important achievement was including Los Angeles’ minority residents in a city government and political system that had pretty much dominated by white politicians and bureaucrats.

Now that we have elected and re-elected America’s first black president, an examination of just how Bradley accomplished the integration of Los Angeles politics is particularly instructive and relevant.

When I talked to them, Goldfarb and Sotomayor were deeply interested in Bradley’s process of building an interracial coalition on his way to becoming mayor. Like President Barack Obama, Bradley knew that he could not be elected without white votes. After an initial defeat in 1969, he worked diligently to win them. I spent many days following him through white areas such as the Pacific Palisades and the San Fernando Valley, watching as his reception became warmer with each visit.

It’s a great story and I’m glad Goldfarb and Sotomayor have finally collected enough money to tell it.

Mayoral candidates miss the train

2013-04-09T21:11:24Z

Of the many items that haven’t made it to the mayoral campaign agenda, one of the most important is how the growing number of rail transit lines will reshape Los Angeles.

The candidates, City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, each have advocated more light rail and subways. Garcetti has been more specific, calling for the start or completion of 10 new rail lines, including a tunnel under Sepulveda Pass connecting the Valley to West L.A.

But as is the case with much that happens in the city, none of this seems to have dented the consciousness of a populace that doesn’t pay attention to civic affairs or projects until the earthmovers and dump trucks show up. Understanding this, Garcetti and Greuel focus on hotter subjects.

Some residents, however, are good at pre-emptive action, such as those fighting a proposed new runway at LAX or people in my neighborhood opposing a huge apartment-retail-restaurant complex at the Expo line rail station to be built at Sepulveda Avenue and Pico Boulevard.

The project, by developer Alan Casden, is a perfect example of how train lines will change Los Angeles from a sprawling flat city to a denser, high-rise one. To find out what the city is going to do about it, I dropped into a meeting April 2 of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Boulevard Homeowners Association at St. Timothy’s Church.

Instead of a mayoral candidate, the homeowners got a couple of city planning department officials who spoke in the impenetrable bureaucratic language favored by so many city planners. The officials wanted to talk about process. The homeowners wanted to talk about the 638 apartments; five buildings, one 15 stories high; the 1,566 residents; and the congestion expected at 27 area intersections. The latter figure was in a draft environmental impact report.

Rather than listen to a tedious discussion of how the city will plan for future development, the homeowners were interested in the here and now, specifically Casden’s political clout, as seen in city approval of his big developments in Westwood and elsewhere. “Casden has been able to steamroller everything with money and power,” said one of his critics.

What was missing here and in other city policy discussions was an examination of what these train lines would do for—and to—the city. In the Valley, there is talk of converting the popular Orange Line express bus to light rail, better able to handle the growing patronage. A Crenshaw rail line will be built and light rail is changing East L.A. The subway extension will remake the neighborhoods in the Wilshire corridor.

It’s definitely something for Greuel and Garcetti to discuss. But the subject deals too much with Los Angeles’ future to attract attention in a campaign where both candidates are worried about a short-term gain of votes in an election less than two months away.

LA Observed photo: Expo Line construction near Pico and Sepulveda.

Edelman and Hahn: Two of a kind yet different

2013-04-03T23:00:21Z

On my way to the courthouse for some interviews Tuesday, I glanced across the plaza at the county administration building and thought of two terrific county supervisors, Edmund D. Edelman and Kenneth Hahn.

Edelman came to mind because Steve Lopez had called me about him the night before for his column, which appeared Wednesday, on the affectionate and informative documentary made by the retired supervisor’s wife Mari Edelman. The documentary, “The Passion and Politics of Ed Edelman,” will be shown on KOCE’ PBS SoCal at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Thinking about Hahn is unavoidable. The county building was named for him after his death in 1997, the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.

The hall reflects the secretive nature of country government. A Mussolini architect in Fascist Italy or one of Stalin’s favorites could have designed it. It is severe, unimaginative and massive, with long hallways inside that make it hard to find public officials. And when I reported from there about a quarter century ago, it was all but impossible to get those officials to share information with reporters or the public.

Hahn was different. He loved publicity. His agenda was often set by hot stories on page one of the Los Angeles Times. When his colleagues, who didn’t much like him, were doing something he considered wrong, he ignored secrecy customs and told reporters of the foul deeds. I was the beneficiary of a couple of instances of his defiant sharing.

He accomplished much for his south LA district, where he was a white politician beloved by his black constituents. In an area without hospitals, he built Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, a jewel when it opened even though it has been degraded by later generations. And in an area without adequate public transit, he sparked the building of the Blue Line light rail.

Edelman also accomplished great things but he was different than Hahn. He accepted the county tradition of secrecy and personally did not seem to enjoy publicity. I disagreed with him on a secrecy issue, when he and the other supervisors met behind closed doors to draw up a reapportionment plan that would drastically change the boundaries of Edelman’s district to make it easier for a Latino to win. One of our reporters was thrown out of a meeting room where, as he had discovered, the supervisors were plotting.

But Edelman, now seriously ill, got a lot done behind those closed doors. Patiently working with his supervisorial colleagues, some of whom were incredibly bull headed and backward, he pushed through one of the most important reforms in county history, the children’s court, where children, caught in the juvenile justice system, face the judges in surroundings that are much more child friendly and humane than they were in the past. It’s named after him.

And today, as the U. S. Supreme Court ponders same-sex marriage, it’s timely to remember how he stood up for gays and lesbians in a time when they hovered in the shadows. A great civil libertarian, he forced the West Hollywood sheriff’s personnel to stop their overbearing, often brutal treatment of gays and lesbians, who were scorned or ignored by most political leaders.

All that’s part of the dynamic, often tense social history of Los Angeles County and Mari Edelman captured it well in her documentary.

L.A. history made human

2013-03-22T22:19:48Z

An interesting mixture of policy and personality was on display Wednesday night at a panel discussion sponsored by the senior lawyers section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

The title was “Riots in Los Angeles—Lessons Learned and Progress Made.” But the subject really was the Los Angeles Police Department and the progress it has made from its crude, racist days of the 1965 Watts riot to its intelligent handling of the Occupy L.A. movement in 2011.

On the panel were people who shaped the change and could explain it through their own unique experiences. Instead of dry policy stuff, the audience got very human stories.

Panelists Police Chief Charlie Beck, civil rights attorney Connie Rice and Judge Raymond Fisher of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal each have had major roles in the department's transformation. I was also on the panel, providing the perspective of a journalist who observed the police from Watts to Occupy L.A. and was Los Angeles Times city editor when the paper exposed the L.A.P.D.’s Rampart scandal. The moderator was attorney Anthony De Los Reyes, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Commission. And in the audience, adding her own views, was Andrea Ordin, an attorney who is president of the police commission.

Rice, who fought the department over misconduct many times but now works with Beck on reform, recalled the bad old days. She has the gift of narrative, shown in her excellent book “Power Concedes Nothing.” She remembered how, as a young African American woman, she was pulled over and ordered out of her car by L.A. cops. Then, anecdote by anecdote, she took the audience through the department’s failures in the 1992 riot, and then into the reform era of Chief Bill Bratton and his successor Chief Beck. During Occupy L.A., an L.A.P.D. commander phoned her to tell how the cops were serving turkey to the occupiers on Thanksgiving. She also told how she worked closely with the department during the tense days of the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, an African American former Los Angeles cop whose murderous vendetta threatened to stir more racial animosity.

Chief Beck told of an incident at the outset of the 1992 riot that helped shape his attitude toward policing. He had returned home at after the police officers were acquitted of the Rodney King beating. His wife, a law enforcement officer, was home pregnant. She wondered why her husband, a sergeant, was home as the riot was beginning. So poor were communications that Beck had not been alerted. Beck, then a sergeant, looked at television and immediately headed back downtown. Eventually, he ended up at a police field headquarters in South L.A. and found himself in the middle of complete confusion in a field filled with too many emergency vehicles and unorganized cops. It was a graphic description of L.A.P.D. chaos at this low point in its history and Beck said he vowed that if he were ever in charge of anything in the department, he’d make sure this never happened again.

Judge Fisher was deputy general counsel to the Christopher Commission, the body created after the riot with the task of making sure the chaos experienced by Beck would not be repeated. Under the strict leadership of the late Warren Christopher, a distinguished attorney who later became secretary of state, the commission investigated what happened and made a series of recommendations that resulted in major LAPD changes—for the better. He told how Christopher assembled a talented group of attorneys and would not permit them to stray from his goal of completing their task as soon as possible. Fisher’s picture of the soft-spoken but firm minded Christopher herding his talented crew toward their goal explained why the report was so powerful, clear and convincing.

I talked about news coverage. I explained that the Times dispatched reporters all over Los Angeles in 1992, covering the pre-riot tension, the riot and the aftermath. As our reporters dug deep into the Rampart scandal of the late 1990s, we were able to put more journalists on the story, doing investigative work that angered the then police chief Bernard Parks. But with the staff and circulation reduced by half, I said it would be impossible for the paper to explore the complexities of L.A. ethnic tensions and poverty and police relations with the community as deeply as we did. And we were far from perfect.

Finally, the panelists remembered former Mayor James Hahn, now a judge. He fired Parks, possibly costing himself re-election as mayor, and supported the federal consent decree which put the Christopher reforms, and other LAPD improvements in effect. The judge wasn’t in the room but he deserves a lot of credit for what happened.

Robin Boyarsky Smith: 1959-2013

2013-03-12T21:55:50Z

I thought people might be interested in our thoughts on our daughter Robin, who died late last month. In addition to us—Nancy and Bill Boyarsky—Robin leaves behind many others who loved her, especially her husband Russell Smith, her sister Jennifer Boyarsky Doliner, her brother-in-law John Doliner, and her nieces, Anabelle Doliner and Lila Doliner, who adored her.

Bill on Robin: What we most remember about Robin is her wit, intelligence and love for her family. Her humor was expressed in her art, her wisecracks, and anecdotes about her friends and life. She was a funny cartoonist. Her depictions of great Boyarsky family moments portrayed our flooded Virginia basement, our disastrous decision to tow a trailer to Tahoe with our Volkswagon and, of course, our cats. Other art was darker, reflecting her brilliant, complex mind. We enjoyed visiting her at Franklin Canyon Park where she worked for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. We’d have a picnic lunch and walk around the park, circling the lake where she seemed to know every duck and turtle. She also loved Hollywood and the craziness of L.A. We’ll miss her every day.

Nancy on Robin: Robin did have her dark moods. But I also remember the many good moments we had together. There was no better company, no wittier companion. She had so many gifts: her great intelligence, her art, her appreciation for nature, her talent for writing, her warm and loving nature, the passion she shared with us for Victorian novels and other good books. She had a lot of screwy ideas and prejudices (for example, her life-long hatred of mayonnaise), which her father and I referred to as “notions.” She insisted they were not notions, but deeply held principles. In one of our last email exchanges, I tried to explain a mixup about a funny valentine ecard I’d sent her. “I know,” she wrote back. “I always knew. Where did you get this notion that I didn’t? It was very funny and I laughed and laughed! What larks we had! What larks!”

Condomania and the campaign

2013-02-23T22:36:12Z

In the months before the recession struck, I spent a lot of time covering “condomania,” an L.A. affliction marked by conversion of affordable apartment houses into expensive condos. Many tenants, facing eviction, told me their stories. Then the economy collapsed and the condo developers disappeared, along with their plans to tear down the apartments.

Now they’ve returned. Construction of transit stations has focused developers back to the job of turning lower rent apartment houses into high-end rentals and condos, according to tenant advocate Larry Gross, executive director of Coalition For Economic Survival. He told me it’s happening in Hollywood, Koreatown, Studio City, Sherman Oaks and Valley Village. “And on the Gold Line into East L.A. we will see gentrification expanding,” he said, as well as along the Expo Line from downtown into West L.A. and eventually Santa Monica.

Affordable housing is generally defined as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a low-income family’s pay. Gross said 58 percent of L.A. renters are paying more than 30 percent and a third are paying about 50 percent.

Yet the fate of tenants has not been a major issue in the election for mayor. That is until recently when the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, the city’s major landlord group, announced its support for candidates Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilwoman Jan Perry.

It’s not known whether this will help or hurt the recipients. As the L.A. Times’ Michael Finnegan wrote, “landlord endorsements are not entirely a badge of honor in a city where about 60 percent of the housing is occupied by tenants.”

Greuel said it was a sign of her support among business and labor. But tenant advocate Gross said the apartment house owners “have fought us for years, they have fought rent control and they are coalescing behind Wendy Greuel. Tenants need to know this when they go to the ballot box.”

He was kinder to City Councilman Eric Garcetti. Garcetti, Gross said, “has a mixed record. He hasn’t been with us on every issue, such as supporting a rent freeze. He voted against it. But on the other hand, he has provided leadership and support on some other key issues.”

Actually, Gross’ constituency of low income and middle-income renters have few, if any friends in city hall. If they had an enemies’ list it should start with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and include the city council and high-level building and planning bureaucrats. The big campaign-contributing construction unions and developers who have great power in city hall have always favored condo conversion. Before the recession, Mayor Villaraigosa, beaming at all the construction, said the crane—a construction crane—should be the city’s official bird.

The council and the mayor support big construction around transit stops. As Dakota Smith noted in the Daily News, Villaraigosa, Perry, Garcetti and Greuel favor a Hollywood community plan that would allow pockets of high rises in the area, with its Metro station..
The trouble with such developments is that they sharply increase the value of buildings for many blocks around the station, totally changing neighborhoods and driving out low-rent dwellings.

Gross and the Coalition For Economic Survival want to keep these neighborhoods as they are, many heavily rent controlled and affordable. They are asking the candidates to “stand behind any attempt to weaken rent control” and to preserve rent-controlled buildings or at least require developers to replace the housing lost when they are leveled.

Good luck. With condomania taking hold, there’s not much chance of the tenants’ platform being adopted.

(an earlier version of this column incorrectly quoted Smith as writing Villaraigosa, Perry, Garcetti and Gruel favor the Millenium twin high rise development in Hollywood. Actually, she wrote they favor the Hollywood Community Plan, which allows more high rises in Hollywood).

LA Observed photo of downtown units

And the mayor debate winner is...Professor Guerra

2013-02-06T17:08:08Z

The winner of Tuesday night’s mayoral debate was the moderator, Professor Fernando J. Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles and a longtime analyst of local politics.

Like a professor trying to keep an early morning class awake, Guerra worked hard to breath life into an event where the five candidates gamely fought their way through another of the many forums that are the major public events of the campaign. This one at LMU occurred exactly a month before the March 5 primary election. It was hard to tell who is doing best. They all looked as though they were on a marathon, exhausted and praying the finish line was near.

The room was packed; warm and dark, for the benefit of cameras live streaming the forum. Guerra’s finest few minutes in the two hours was when underdog candidate Emanuel Pleitez revealed his plan to solve the city employee pension crisis. It was very complicated, involving borrowing money from Wall Street to buy out the pension obligations of city workers, who would then use it to build their own retirement accounts.

“It sounds good, but I don’t understand it,” Guerra said, turning a moment that could have been really boring into something amusing. He interrupted the debate, scorning a rigid format, and asked the other candidates if they understood it. None of them did. Neither did I. Afterward, I asked Pleitez aide John Hill to explain it. He did, sort of. Then Pleitez came up and offered to explain it more but I asked him not to. Hill, I said, told me all I had to know.

Pleitez, considered a sure loser by the experts, is actually could be a contender if he gets more campaign contributions. He has a good biography—poor in El Sereno, top student and athlete at Wilson High School, Stanford graduate, Obama transition team official, tech company executive. He’s Latino in a city where the Latino vote could decide the election. But so far, he’s been on display only in debates and before small audiences and may get lost among the television barrage in the final days.

Some other thoughts:

Councilman Eric Garcetti continues to describe Hollywood, in his district, as a crime-free, homeless-free, graffiti-free, low-unemployment island of prosperity in a city that has unfortunately not benefited from his leadership. Hollywood has improved in recent years but it’s definitely not free of the ills that afflict the rest of L.A.

Controller Wendy Greuel, considered, along with Garcetti a front-runner, has stopped talking so much about her audits. I can see why. The subject is uninteresting and the Times raised good questions about how much money they would actually save. Instead, she offered a more lively speaking style and promised to be tough as mayor.

Ex-talk-show host Kevin James remained the best with one-liners. The auditing Greuel, he said, boasts “she knows where the bodies are buried” He said “that’s because she buried the bodies,” presumably meaning city hall secrets.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, asked along with the others what she would like to do if she loses, said she’d study to be a rabbi, and when ordained would work outside temple walls to help society’s unfortunate. Politician turned rabbi—that might be a first.

Perry's winning night

2013-01-30T23:18:38Z

In their many forums, the five mayoral candidates resemble a traveling troupe of actors performing the same roles at each performance, always pretty good but never noteworthy. Tuesday night at Sinai Temple, however, City Councilwoman Jan Perry broke out of the pack with a star turn that made her the evening’s clear winner.

The moderator, Rabbi David Wolpe, asked questions “intended to put the mayoral hopefuls off of their pre-scripted stump speeches,” Jonah Lowenfeld observed in his Jewish Journal story.

One late in the forum certainly did. Wolpe said, “Let’s say you had in front of you the top 500 Hollywood executives. What is it you want to say to them about the movies they make, the city they live in and about the image they give our city and our country to the world? And is it the mayor’s job to monitor, lecture, to uplift, to help shape Los Angeles’ most important industry?”

City Councilman Eric Garcetti offered his usual pitch about giving the industry more tax breaks and other incentives to film in Los Angeles. Similar economic solutions were offered by Controller Wendy Greuel, attorney and former radio talk show host Kevin James and Obama administration transition official Emanuel Pleitez.

Councilwoman Perry seemed to understand that the rabbi had something deeper in mind. She said she had supported legislation to make it easier to make feature film in California, but she quickly moved on: “If we had a room full of executives…from the film industry, I would say this: I would encourage your creativity. I would encourage you to put people in Los Angeles back to work. We have unchecked potential here and I would encourage you to create more apprenticeships, more internships, more opportunities to reach out to young people who may not have the connections or the wherewithal to have a career in the industry and to pull them along with you.

“I’d also say this: ‘Let’s go to the schools, let’s talk to families about the portrayal of violence in movies and how it does desensitize younger people who spend too much time playing violent games on line and then go see it in the movies and remember how it does affect the growth of the next generation.”

She made a good point. City hall is obligated to help Hollywood but it’s not a one-way street. Hollywood has an obligation to the city, to the women and men trying to break into the notoriously closed industry and to the young people who support its films.
It was gutty for a candidate to talk like that to an industry which brooks no criticism. I thought her clear, plain language—without the city hall jargon of her earlier appearances—distinguished her from her opponents, and showed growing skill on the campaign trail.

Interestingly when Wolpe asked the candidates whom they would vote for if they couldn’t vote for themselves, Perry’s four opponents said they’d cast a ballot for her. Perry said she’d vote for Pleitez.

A word about the crowd. It was big, almost filling a large room at the temple. Cars were lined up for a block on Beverly Glen Boulevard, waiting to get into the garage. I had to park two long blocks away on Wellworth Avenue and when I reached the temple the entrance was packed with people waiting to be admitted. You needed to have sent in an RSVP, but the frustrated crowd was too big for the system . I had not submitted an RSVP and was barred by the overwhelmed security guards until a man who had recognized me as a journalist googled a bio with a picture, showed it to the guards and escorted me inside just in time. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t take down his name so I could thank him here.

There are supposed to be 18 more of these forums until the March 5 primary election. Let’s hope the forums turn into debates and the moderators are as sharp and provocative as Rabbi Wolpe.

Homeless — missing from the campaign for mayor

2013-01-15T22:50:49Z

The fact that homelessness occupied just a few minutes at the end of a recent mayoral election debate is evidence of how low one of the city’s most serious problems ranks on the civic agenda.

With homeless encamped from Skid Row to South Los Angeles to the Westside and over the mountains deep into the San Fernando Valley, the matter certainly deserves more time and attention.

The candidates were limited to a minute each on the subject at the Temple Beth Israel debate earlier this month. But each gave it a shot. City Controller Wendy Greuel said she would end homelessness but was vague about how she would do it. Attorney Kevin James said he would convert unused city buildings to shelter the homeless. City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would fight for more county funds for Los Angeles, where large numbers of the homeless are found. Councilman Eric Garcetti pointed to his efforts to create housing for the homeless in his Hollywood district. Emanuel Pleitez spoke of harnessing private capital.

An extended discussion of homelessness would have revealed much about the candidates’ philosophies, knowledge and politics. For the subject touches many societal troubles—mental illness, substance abuse, recession-caused unemployment and the needs of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On veterans, Katharine Russ called attention on the CityWatch web site to the frustratingly slow efforts of the Veterans Administration to provide housing and rehabilitation facilities on the largely empty VA hospital grounds in West L.A. She noted that Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver in 2004 proposed that three buildings be used for housing and therapy but work has started on only one and it won’t be completed until after 2014.

As for the VA hospital grounds, I want to know how the next mayor is going to lead us through a stubborn VA bureaucracy, and how she or he will overcome the opposition of Brentwood homeowners afraid of having more vets as neighbors.

So far, help throughout the city is provided by non-profits that know how to corral funding for housing. Ground was broken for a project that will house 46 homeless and mentally ill people in the Sunland-Tujunga area of the Valley. Speaking at the event, the Daily News reported, was Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose 35-year-old schizophrenic son lives on Valley streets. “He is lost in mental illness,and we don’t know if he is taking his meds,” he said at the event.

There are many families like his, a number growing with the return of veterans suffering from brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder. Certainly, the problem is too big and complex for the next mayor to cure. The city-county Los Angeles Homeless Authority reported there were more than 23,000 homeless in the city and more than 51,000 outside city limits in the county—an estimate considered far too low by other homeless experts. But that’s a huge problem worthy of a big place high on the next mayor’s agenda.

Mayoral candidates in South L.A

2012-12-09T23:58:50Z

It was the first time I’d seen the Los Angeles mayoral candidates on the same platform so I listened closely to discern the differences between them.

Last Friday’s event was perfect for a discussion of some of the most complex issues facing Los Angeles. It was the annual Health and Human Rights Conference at the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, which provides a wide range of health care to thousands of poor people in South Los Angeles. I had spent several hours at the conference before the candidate forum, hearing speakers talk about the difficulties the poor face in getting care and other services.

On the mayoral panel, City Councilman Eric Garcetti and Kevin James, an attorney and radio talk show host, were the best speakers. For James, after years on the tough L.A. talk radio circuit, it comes naturally. Garcetti lacks James’ resonant voice and blunt talk radio phrase making. But he can rise to eloquence, as when he spoke of the poor “as voices we don’t hear.” He also spoke Spanish on occasion, appreciated by Latino members of an audience composed of Latinos, African Americans and whites.

City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilwoman Jan Perry were straightforward and sincere, but they tended to talk of their accomplishments in a manner that assumed the audience knew of the many programs that emerge from city hall.

As a political outsider running as an anti city hall candidate, James blasted Garcetti, Greuel and Perry for accepting campaign contributions from developers. He went after Perry in particular, blaming her for the closing of the big South L.A, community farm. “I have a higher expectation for the factual accuracy of what you say,” said Perry, declaring James didn’t know what he was talking about.

For students of arcane political moves like me, the James-Perry exchanges were interesting. Was Republican James trying to tear down Perry, who may be the candidate of conservative downtown business interests? We’ll have to wait and see.

The issues raised at the conference—health, welfare, and poverty—fall, to a great extent to county government although the mayor can have great influence as a vocal advocate. All the candidates pledged to do something. Garcetti, who said he and his wife have been foster parents to seven children, spoke with some knowledge of the county’s troubled foster care system. James, who is gay, spoke of his years as a leader of AIDS Project Los Angeles, which has been deeply involved with the county health program,

The audience seemed appreciative of the four appearing at the conference, hitting them with questions and opinions. It was a good experience for the candidates, who, as the campaign continues, may be allocating more of their time in more affluent places, figuring that’s where they’ll find the most voters. Hopefully, the eventual winner will remember this particular afternoon in South L.A.

New players in an old game

2012-11-30T19:39:49Z

What was most interesting to me at Eric Garcetti’s mayoral election fund raiser Thursday night was that I didn’t know anyone except for Eric and his father, Gil, the former district attorney.

I remarked on that to Gil Garcetti, who says he often encounters such a situation when he attends political events, although people recognize him from his days as D.A.

Most everyone at the Latino event at Guelaguetza Restaurant, west of downtown, was young, or seemed so to me. Those I knew a few years ago are gone, some retired, some moved, some dead. No doubt the other mayoral candidates—City Controller Wendy Greuel, City Councilwoman Jan Perry and former assistant U.S. attorney and radio talk show host Kevin James—are aiming to expand their contributor, volunteer and voter base in the same way. A new generation may be on its way to running L.A., changing the way politics is conducted here and maybe even how government is operated.

Mayoral candidate Garcetti told the audience “we will turn out people…who have not voted in past elections.”

That seemed to be pointing the way to an Obama-like get-out-the vote operation in which demographic and political data on each potential voter is combined in voting lists, which are used by volunteers to canvass neighborhoods. The sophisticated campaigning was crucial to the president’s victory.

I visited Obama headquarters in Los Angeles County throughout the campaign and saw how each one was run by young, tech-savvy women and men, directing volunteers young and old. It was so well organized that each volunteer had a task, was held accountable for completing it—and felt they were an important part of the national Obama effort.

Bill Carrick, Garcetti’s campaign manager, said the campaign would, as the candidate noted, target Latino voters who have not been part of the political process as well as young voters. Both played an important part in the Obama victory.

Carrick managed Democratic Rep. Lois Capps successful campaign against challenger Abel Maldonado on the central coast this year, a victory, he said, that was helped along by a big turnout of voters from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

So maybe it is a new day. I’ll know if, after the election, I walk into city hall and see a bunch of new people with fresh ideas running the place.
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Big bucks for Berman super PAC

2012-10-15T23:00:48Z

The super PAC supporting Rep. Howard Berman is prepared to spend $1.2 million on mailings and cable TV advertising in the final weeks of his intense campaign against Rep. Brad Sherman in the San Fernando Valley.

“We’re moving forward, raising money and doing fine,” said Marc Nathanson, the financier and cable TV executive who heads the PAC, the Committee to Elect an Effective Valley Congressman. He said John Shallman, a well-known local political consultant, is shaping the advertisements.

I talked to Nathanson on the telephone after receiving e-mail from Stephanie Daily, a veteran political fundraiser now working for the pro-Berman PAC asking prospective donors for $1 million in the next two weeks.

Nathanson said the advertising campaign would highlight Sherman’s acceptance of financial support from super PACs run by the Carpenters Union and the National Assn. of Realtors. A taste of that was in the Daily e-mail: “Millions have been spent by special interest super PACS attacking Howard.”

At the outset of the campaign, Sherman criticized Berman for the super PAC, and said the two candidates should refuse such support. Parke Skelton, who is running the Sherman campaign, confirmed that Sherman is accepting support from the union and realtors PACs. “We tried repeatedly to forego super PACs and he (Berman) laughed us off the stage. This is bound to be what happens,” Skelton said. He said the carpenters supported Sherman for his stand on trade and the realtors for the congressman’s efforts to revise loan limits, which helped Valley residents buy homes.

Nathanson said the PAC would spend a total of $2 million by the time the campaign is over, counting both the primary and general election campaigns.

One message, he said, would be that “Brad has terribly inflated his record” and that he is a “very weak, unimportant player who does very little legislatively.” He said that record would be compared with Berman’s on matters such as Israel, a major issue in a district with many Jewish constituents. The advertisements will also counter Sherman’s criticisms of Berman’s trips abroad, which Nathanson said were part of Berman’s job as chair and now ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee.

And, Nathanson said, other ads will remind voters of the debate that turned somewhat physical last Thursday. The candidates argued over Sherman’s contention that Berman did not author the Dream Act, which would have permitted young immigrants here without documents to stay in the country legally. Sherman insisted another congressman was the author. This angered Berman and the two had a disagreement that ultimately saw Sherman putting his arm around Berman—not in a friendly manner—and a sheriff’s deputy separating them.

Jonah Lowenfeld reported in the Jewish Journal that a group of immigration reform advocates said Berman, indeed, was the Dream Act author and that Sherman was slow to back it.

A new Berman attack

2012-10-01T23:43:23Z

We in the Berman-Sherman press corps waited on hold for the beginning of the conference call that would bring us the latest bombshell in the contest between the two San Fernando Valley congressmen. Finally, it landed—a charge by Rep. Howard Berman that Rep. Brad Sherman had loaned himself money for political campaigns and charged his campaign organization interest.

It wasn’t exactly a bunker buster. I’ve often encountered this practice in covering political campaigns. A candidate needs money in a hurry to get the campaign going. She dips into the family treasury and makes a loan to the campaign with interest. Later, contributors dump money into the campaign, and the candidate is repaid. This is legal but I’ve always felt there is something questionable about it. The practice permits money to be constantly shifted back and forth in campaigns, and government political enforcement officials, seeking full disclosure, have trouble keeping track of it. In addition, winning candidates hold fundraisers to repay the loan after the election, using their power to squeeze contributors who may have government business before them.

In the conference call and in an e-mail sent out earlier in the day, Brandon Hall, Berman’s senior strategist, said Sherman had loaned his campaign money over several years, and charged interest that totaled $461,000. Hall said the Berman campaign was “not alleging he (Sherman) had done anything illegal” but said he “had crossed over ethical lines” and was “unethical” by using his campaign for “personal enrichment.”

He said Sherman left money in campaign bank accounts for years, charging the campaign interest. Then when he paid the money back, Hall said, “he had to raise money from special interests.”

Parke Skelton, Sherman’s campaign manager, said Sherman charged interest lower than the bank rate. He said Hall’s $461,000 figure was correct. Sherman, he said, would repay part of a loan with contributions. But some of the debt remained after a campaign, and sometimes grew as Sherman loaned his political operation more money for the next campaign—charging interest on the unpaid balance.

Skelton said the Berman effort, to be featured on television and radio ads and mailing, as well as on the Internet, was designed to “distract voters from his own astonishing record of abusing public office” by using a government car for private trips and employing his brother, Michael Berman, as a campaign consultant.

This is pretty complicated stuff but the Berman campaign has reduced it to a simple ad on a new website.

Sherman is leading in the polls, largely because he had previously represented most of the new district, created by a reapportionment that combined the Berman and Sherman districts. Now, Berman strategist Hall said Berman will use the advertising to “draw a contrast with Brad Sherman” in the parts of the old district Sherman represented.