EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s links to what the LA Times, Daily News and LA Weekly had to say today about the election.
The turnout for Tuesday’s election actually exceeded all expectations and the final tally might not be known for as much as three weeks with 46,000 ballots still uncounted but one fact is painfully clear: A great divide exists in our city.
My pal Jack Humphreville has looked at the numbers (Here’s a spreadsheet for wonks primarynumbers) and found the mayor actually would have been forced into a runoff if voters in the five richest and whitest City Council districts had their way.
The mayor got less than half the vote in the districts of Greig Smith (36 %), Dennis Zine (43%), Wendy Greuel (44%) and Bill Rosendahl (48%) and 51% in Jack Weiss’ district.
The trend was even more dramatic when it comes to Measure B which was overwhelmingly rejected in the same five council districts: Smith (68%), Zine
(62%), Weiss (60%), Greuel (59%) and Rosendahl (58%).
The contrast is stark when those numbers on Measure B are compared to how voters went in five heavily minority districts of Jan Perry, Bernard Parks, Herb Wesson, Eric Garcetti and Jose Huizar where the No on Measure B campaign got just 25 to 40% of the vote.
The numbers are telling. We are a city divided against itself, a city where 85% percent of the people abdicate their civic responsibilities entirely and where those who care enough to vote are divided by race, class and geography.
The result makes for easy pickings for a political system that has failed to produce a single leader willing and able to rise above their sense of service to self and special interests.
They live off of our differences and exploit them to advantage themselves and those who provide their campaign money and keep them in office with $180,000 salaries, lucrative benefits and perks.
And so year by year, LA becomes like the aging industrial cities back east, eaten away by the loss of good jobs and rising poverty and deteriorating neighborhoods.
To me, a man suffering from an excess of passion and too often given to hyperbole, that’s a crime.
I
can’t help myself from wondering over and over how otherwise decent and
intelligent people like our elected officials can look themselves in
the mirror in the morning without any sense of shame.
Are they
so self-deluded they cannot face the truth? Are they so flattered by
the praise of sycophants, they cannot see how they are doing more harm
than good?
We ought to be the greatest city on earth, the
climate, the freedom, the richness of our cultural diversity — a city
where dreams come to life. That’s why so many of us have come here, to
discover and manifest who we really are as people.
LA is a
dangerous place. Our myths of absolute freedom, of reinvention, of
stardom have their perils. Freedom is a risky thing, it’s always a
question of whether we will find heaven or hell by following our
instincts and seeking our destiny.
Everywhere I go on both sides
of the divide I meet people who believe we are at the tipping point, a
point of no return, where we descend into a collective hell, a Blade
Runner world of the rich living luxuriously in protected enclaves and
the masses of poor living in crime-ridden slums.
The election results have given me hope, inspiration that we are at a turning point, not a tipping point.
The
mayor with his broken promises and his politics above policies was
nearly forced into a runoff by my friend Zuma Dogg. The ineffectual
Jack Weiss, servant of the political machine, is a dead man walking as
he heads into a runoff.
And a grassroots movement of ordinary
people from all over the city rallied behind a cause, worked tirelessly
to defeat the most cynical ballot proposition ever put before LA
voters, the “Green Energy and Good Jobs” Measure B that had nothing to
do with either green energy or good jobs.
It was nothing but a license to steal billions of dollars.
Measure B was a loser on election day because the people of the city rose up against it and revealed the truth.
What
the cynics don’t understand is that truth is the most powerful weapon
there is. Literally, hundreds of us ordinary people contributed
critical elements to this campaign and as it gained momentum business
and labor and political groups of every persuasion joined in.
We
won because everyone now knows Measure B was a fraud and there’s a
better way to actually bring solar energy to LA with the full
participation of all the stakeholders, and to do it faster and cheaper.
It
doesn’t really matter if the final tally shows Measure B won or lost by
a few votes. There is no mandate for it. We are divided down the
middle. What really matters is what we do next.
Measure B was a symbol, a symptom of our malaise, proof of the failure of our city’s leadership.
But
a miracle happened. We found our leader. It is the people. Jack
Humphreville, Stephen and Enci Box, Soledad Garcia, John Stammreich,
Cindy Cleghorn, Noel Weiss, Chris Rowe, Dan Weisman, the list goes on
and on.
It is everyone who gives of themselves for the greater
good, whose sense of selfless service is at least as great as their
sense of self service.
We have only just begun to work for a
greater LA. But we have made a start down a long and difficult road.
The political and civic leadership of the city can stand in our way or
they can join with us.
Right or wrong, for better or worse, I
for one believe this is the turning point and that somehow, some way we
will turn back from the abyss of a city declining into a kind of hell
and make it the city of our dreams.
Keep the passion and hyperbole, Ron. I love that about you.
Now.. on to getting rid of Jack Weiss for good! What’s first?
Greig Smith is part of the problem. Those in office should be getting the vote out. Greig Smith’s weekly briefing failed to even note that there was an election this week. He is so weak, he voted to put B on the ballot and then said he had a change of heart, after he realized he had not been told how much this would cost the ratepayers. He is not the worst, and may be one of the best downtown. However, he knows better, and still does nothing to cure the problems we have. He is not worth a penny he is paid.
Eloquent words Ron and I agree with you. Kudos to all involved in making Measure B known as a scam. Now that the election is over but not the total count, there is no time to celebrate. We must all get down to work and devise new plans for alternative energy for all the stakeholders. This means providing non-union jobs and helping small business. We must provide transparency from the mayor, DWP, IBEW employee union, special interests and developers. Yes our work is really just starting. Mayor Tony V vows to continue on with his solar plan and that means DWP interests and IBEW union interest only. We have to make sure this does not happen.
Eloquent words Ron and I agree with you. Kudos to all of you involved in making Measure B known as a scam. Now that the election is over but not the total count, there is no time to celebrate. We must all get down to work and devise new plans for alternative energy for all the stakeholders. This means providing non-union jobs and helping small business. We must provide transparency from the mayor, DWP, IBEW employee union, special interests and developers. Yes our work is really just starting. Mayor Tony V vows to continue on with his solar plan and that means DWP interests and IBEW union interest only. We have to make sure this does not happen.
If SLAP is serious about changing the culture of corruption at LA City Hall, then you need to start identifying sincere candidates committed to transparency for the Council seats occupied by the deadwood.
The incumbents have so many advantages. A serious challenger must first conduct informal coffees in the neighborhoods with the existing communmity activists. At these coffees, the candiate hones his or her speaking points and policy positions. He or she also lines up persons willing to conduct fundraisers when the time opens up to begin fundraising. A challenger does not need the same amount as the incumbent to win, but the challenger needs to be able to afford call banking and some direct mail. Today, the internet can also make a huge difference but it must be smartly done, with a consultant.
While Councilmembers haul down $180,000, that is before beneifts, so add another 50% to the tab. Platinum health care, both now and in retirement, a fat pension, car, etc. You and I should have such a deal.
The five council districts (Smith, Zine, Greuel, Rosendahl, and Weiss) voted 62% NO on Measure B and 46% for Villaraigosa.
Jack Weiss also underperformed in the 4 districts not his own by about 12%.
Wow, Ron, that is really inspirational. I really appreciate your ability to energize us. We have no time to celebrate because we have so much to do. It is imperative that we keep an eye on the goings on in city hall so that we don’t get blind sided again! Our success and uniting the opposion to Measure B should be an example to all of us as to what we can do when we work and stick together.
I fear that with what I have read in yesterday’s news that we are going to have the solar panels installed by the IBEW workers under the auspices of the DWP no matter how the final certified election results turn out. The Mayor let it slip when he acknowledged that they have the right to do it and the vote was a sort of chance for the voters to weigh in. Nice of them to ask us, don’t you think? Also remember that Wendy Greuel is going to be the controller so any chances of a fair audit of the DWP and it’s expenditures have evaporated.
We also have the run off for City Attorney to come and that is going to be so nasty that there will be a lingering smell over the city for years. I believe that Villaraigosa and Greuel are going to get fully behind their pal and it will be “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”. There is also Weiss’ biggest cheerleader Smilin’ Bill Bratton, Police Chief to the Stars, so this runoff is going to be a very rough road and I don’t mean just the city’s numerous potholes and pitted pavement.
The 400 MW solar plan is part of the 1280 total LADWP solar plan. But we don’t even know if they have done a feasibility study yet to determine what roofs could even accomodate solar panels or some kind of thin film technology. That is one of the first questions – how many roofs are capable of holding the solar materials – both because of the weight of the materials and because of the angles of the roofs.
Then we need to ask – what type of solar technology is appropriate for each building. I think that some buildings may be better off with solar thermal for heat – it all depends upon the age of the buildings and what materials that they are made of.
We should ask if an energy audit has been done for all government buildings to see if there are any methods of conservation – insulation, upgrading existing furnaces and A/C, etc.
After every building is audited, then we could determine the best approach for each building instead of saying – we are going to put 400 MW around the City.
The LADWP can continue to look at the feasibility of that plan, but I suspect that is why they were looking at the Palmdale airport – they probably know that it is not the best method of energy production to put it on top of these skyscrapers.
Let’s see if we can have some meetings with the LADWP to see if we can get some of those answers.
hear, hear….. i live in encino, and i voted for moore… the systemic failure of mayor viva la raza, and his buddy, chief bratwurst, have made LA a third world city, and it gets worse by the day.
pretty soon, any middle class tax payer will have had enough of the theft of our monies and move out of California. lets see the illegals absorb the missing tax revenues that they don’t pay…