Editor's Note: The deadline to run for city office in the March primary is Nov. 8, just three weeks away.
By Sandy Sand
Correspondent
From letters to the editor, comments on ronkayela.com and those that I read in the L.A.Times, Daily News, L.A.Weekly, mayorsam.blogspot.com and others...the answer is a resounding YES.
We love Ron's S.L.A.P. [Save L.A. Project] and really want to slap our politicians silly, starting with our 11-percent mayor (on the job 11-percent of the time), to every councilmember to the supes.
But...BIG BUT...as wonderful as community groups, Neighborhood Councils and community activists are...all they can accomplish is one big fat ZILCH, zero, nada, gurnished, rein, nothing until there are honest brokers in these positions.
That means one of us [or two or three] must run against one, two or three of the incumbent councilmen, who have little or no opposition, just as Walter Moore is running against Antionio "11-percent, Photo-op" Villaraigosa.
By Sandy Sand
Correspondent
From letters to the editor, comments on ronkayela.com and those that I read in the L.A.Times, Daily News, L.A.Weekly, mayorsam.blogspot.com and others...the answer is a resounding YES.
We love Ron's S.L.A.P. [Save L.A. Project] and really want to slap our politicians silly, starting with our 11-percent mayor (on the job 11-percent of the time), to every councilmember to the supes.
But...BIG BUT...as wonderful as community groups, Neighborhood Councils and community activists are...all they can accomplish is one big fat ZILCH, zero, nada, gurnished, rein, nothing until there are honest brokers in these positions.
That means one of us [or two or three] must run against one, two or three of the incumbent councilmen, who have little or no opposition, just as Walter Moore is running against Antionio "11-percent, Photo-op" Villaraigosa.
Moore is correct when he says if we want change; if we want to turn
around this third world, sanctuary in the toilet and being asked to
drink the waste water city; if we want sanity in government; if we want
an end to corruption and Pay-to-Play politics...then we have to run for
office.
Moore has promised that if he's elected he will only serve one term, turn things around, and then go back to having a 'real' life.
Maybe that's one of the answers to turning around this city.
Changing the City Charter so that the mayor and council members can only serve one six-year term, not run for office again for five years, and never again have career politicians run, run, run and be corrupted by the system.
Once in office, and knowing that they're guaranteed a spot for life immediately detaches them from real life people and attaches them to lobbyists and special interests, like pilot fish to sharks.
As Moore ably explained it in a newsletter, it doesn't take all that much to run:
Running for City Council may seem like a daunting task, but look at the numbers before throwing in the towel.
You'll be shocked by how few votes are needed to unseat the people who, along with Villaraigosa, are ruining our city.
If the same number of voters show up next time as showed up last time, here is how few votes you would need to defeat the incumbents in the odd-numbered districts without a runoff:
District 1: Reyes - 7,136
District 3: Zine - 16,738
District 5: Weiss - 19,827 (he's running for City Attorney, by the way, so you don't even have to run against him)
District 7: Alarcon - 4,771
District 9: Perry - 7,385
District 11: Rosendahl - 20,481
District 13: Garcetti - 7,350 (he ran unopposed)
Surprising how few votes it would take, isn't it?
The City has four million inhabitants -- many of them here legally -- and an annual budget of $7 billion, and the "President" of the City Council could have been someone else with just 7,350 votes.
What does it mean? It means the thing that is killing our city -- voter apathy -- is the same thing that can save it. We don't have to convince millions of people to vote. We need only get the same 239,513 people who voted "no" on Prop S to show up on March 3, 2009.
So how about it? How about YOU becoming one of the "Magnificent Seven" who, along with me as Mayor, will turn this city around?
What's the worst that could happen? We could lose. But even if we lose, we'll know we did everything we could to save America's second biggest city.
And if you don't run, well, just remember: "For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.
None of this means that us running for office is a fool-proof system to end the corruption. The moneyed power players will find a way around it, and stack the deck by hand-picking their own candidates and backing them financially.
They are already doing that, and I wouldn't expect it to end, but we can make it a little harder for them to do it.
If we don't do something pro-active we have nothing left to do but complain and years of the same-old, same-old ahead of us.
We need people in public office on our side.
Moore has promised that if he's elected he will only serve one term, turn things around, and then go back to having a 'real' life.
Maybe that's one of the answers to turning around this city.
Changing the City Charter so that the mayor and council members can only serve one six-year term, not run for office again for five years, and never again have career politicians run, run, run and be corrupted by the system.
Once in office, and knowing that they're guaranteed a spot for life immediately detaches them from real life people and attaches them to lobbyists and special interests, like pilot fish to sharks.
As Moore ably explained it in a newsletter, it doesn't take all that much to run:
Running for City Council may seem like a daunting task, but look at the numbers before throwing in the towel.
You'll be shocked by how few votes are needed to unseat the people who, along with Villaraigosa, are ruining our city.
If the same number of voters show up next time as showed up last time, here is how few votes you would need to defeat the incumbents in the odd-numbered districts without a runoff:
District 1: Reyes - 7,136
District 3: Zine - 16,738
District 5: Weiss - 19,827 (he's running for City Attorney, by the way, so you don't even have to run against him)
District 7: Alarcon - 4,771
District 9: Perry - 7,385
District 11: Rosendahl - 20,481
District 13: Garcetti - 7,350 (he ran unopposed)
Surprising how few votes it would take, isn't it?
The City has four million inhabitants -- many of them here legally -- and an annual budget of $7 billion, and the "President" of the City Council could have been someone else with just 7,350 votes.
What does it mean? It means the thing that is killing our city -- voter apathy -- is the same thing that can save it. We don't have to convince millions of people to vote. We need only get the same 239,513 people who voted "no" on Prop S to show up on March 3, 2009.
So how about it? How about YOU becoming one of the "Magnificent Seven" who, along with me as Mayor, will turn this city around?
What's the worst that could happen? We could lose. But even if we lose, we'll know we did everything we could to save America's second biggest city.
And if you don't run, well, just remember: "For all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.
None of this means that us running for office is a fool-proof system to end the corruption. The moneyed power players will find a way around it, and stack the deck by hand-picking their own candidates and backing them financially.
They are already doing that, and I wouldn't expect it to end, but we can make it a little harder for them to do it.
If we don't do something pro-active we have nothing left to do but complain and years of the same-old, same-old ahead of us.
We need people in public office on our side.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
Sandy, regarding the 5th District, there are plenty of candidates...and, here's the best news, 5th District residents actually have a good choice of candidates to select from including a few pro-resident community activists. A few of them are even discussing agreeing not to take any monies from developers. Further, local homeowner and residents' groups just had a candidates forum which gave us a good indication on what we can expect from the candidates and why.
Although you didn't mention the 2nd District, Wendy Greuel's seat is up for grabs too. She is running basically unopposed for City Controller. Groups in the 2nd District have already started meeting with the objective of doing what the 5th District group is - finding our own candidate to endorse.
My recommendation to other groups in the other Council Districts is to start networking now. Neighborhood Councils seem to be a great place for bringing people together too along with homeowner and residents' groups.
That candidate forum was organized and attended by the same group of people who've been trying to be "the voice" of CD5 forever, but in fact are almost all older, insular homeowners who are the ultimate definition of CAVE's (even beyond NIMBYs, which can in certain cases be a good thing).
The vast majority of residents and homeowners don't even know who these people are, being too busy working and raising their kids or living their lives (or unfortunately, just too apathetic about local politics until a crisis intrudes on their world), and if they do know who these people are, often disagree with their views and don't feel welcome showing up at their meetings or breaking into their mindsets. In fact, many of us feel that they're the last people to be hand-selected a candidate for CD5.
No one who panders to their views has a good chance of delivering on their promises, would likely be anti-subway, is opposed to modified one-ways like Pico-Olympic plan or any of the other RAND study measures Ron recently posted here (falsely claiming that RAND opposed mass transit/ Measure R, to be disabused of that by the author of the study, Paul Sorenson) and zero development (instead of controlled and upscale development, since some development is inevitable, like it or not, so the only real question is, what kind). The sheer nerve of the same few people presuming to play kingmaker. And just try disagreeing with them ! --
If they'd really wanted to publicize this forum, they could have, which would have been a real public service. But they don't really want an inclusive representation, of people like UCLA staff and students, younger, cosmopolitan people who compare our city to others around the world and not bedroom villages, or anyone who has a broader view. (Just look at the dynamics at MTA meetings for Expo, the westside Extension, etc.)
While HOA's perform a useful purpose in putting a break on certain kinds of development, the general public is not at all served by the same few people who have stalled everything for decades and have left us in the development/ gridlock/ no mass transit pickle we're in now. Hopefully the media will do a better job of telling the public more about the candidates' views and platforms.
10/18/2008
News, news and what news!!!!
Capable, interested people are beginning to realize that "Yes, we can beat
City Hall!"
Thank you Walter Moore and Sandy Sand for your input into Ron Kaye's S.L.A.P.
effort inspired by all of us who have been fighting city hall for many years !
You don't have to be an Einstein to run our city. It is just like running your own life, you have to keep to a budget, don't you? And you care about your family and your neighborhood and city, don't you? If you are up to it, cast your hat into the ring!
The rest of us will get the vote out, won't we? I know that I can do that much and I want to help.
The November 4 elections are taking up a lot of time right now and rightly so, lot at stake! But the March 3. 2009 elections will have New York, Chicago, Sacramento looking at what is happening right here in Los Angeles. Let's show them how!!!
Read the votes cast in the last election for the city council seats. We can overcome!
TH
Anonymous, who wrote on October 18, at 9:13, needs to be reminded that we need to come together and not fall apart.
Walter Moore is a strong candidate for Mayor, and has reached the matching funds limit. That means, he can ask Mayor Villaraigosa to debate. Now Villaraigosa may refuse matching funds or have another excuse. But, if NCs begin holding candidate forums, make sure to invite both the Mayor and Walter Moore.
Yes on Proposition 8
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Yes Proposition 8
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