 he
most encouraging thing a man of my political ideology can say about
today's mayoral election in Los Angeles is that a liberal will lose.
This will come as small consolation, of course, for in the runoff
between James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa a liberal will also win.
For those readers fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with either of
these men, imagine a contest between Ted Kennedy and Che Guevara.
Municipal contests
in Los Angeles are nonpartisan, and city attorney Hahn and former
California assembly speaker Villaraigosa were the top two finishers
among six major candidates in the April primary. Reflecting an unfortunate
trend in Los Angeles, the only two candidates with even moderately
conservative credentials, businessman Steve Soboroff and longtime
city councilman Joel Wachs, finished out of the money. (As a conservative
gay man, Wachs had a natural constituency of about two-dozen people
in the entire city.) What has come to pass since the primary is
an entertaining spectacle of intramural squabbling similar to a
Democratic presidential primary campaign. Villaraigosa and Hahn
have by turns tacked left and right, exchanging barbs as to who
is more liberal and who is in whose pocket.
The Hahn campaign
has taken great glee in exploiting one aspect of Bill Clinton's
pardon problem. Among the lucky winners in the Clinton clemency
orgy was Carlos Vignali, who strolled out of federal prison after
serving six years of a fifteen-year sentence for cocaine trafficking.
Villaraigosa wrote to the White House on Vignali's behalf — on California
state letterhead — asking that he be considered for a pardon. He
at first denied writing such a letter but copped out when the L.A.
Times produced a copy of it. Vignali's father Horacio had been
a donor to Villaraigosa's state assembly campaign.
But Hahn is
not without his own skeletons in the ethics closet. When Patrick
Kennedy, dimwitted congressman of Rhode Island, was caught on videotape
shoving an airport security guard at LAX last year, Hahn's office
declined to prosecute him. The matter was instead handled through
a quasi-judicial city-attorney hearing. And in December 1998, California
assemblyman and professional race-baiter Kevin Murray was arrested
while patronizing the world's oldest profession — in broad daylight
— in a Hollywood parking lot. The case languished for months in
Hahn's office before being quietly dropped. The lame excuse offered
for the dismissal was that the arresting officers had failed to
seize and book the condom Murray was wearing at the time. A deputy
city attorney in Hahn's office once lamented to me, "I wish
just once we could do the right thing instead of weighing all of
the politics."
The L.A.
Times has endorsed Villaraigosa, which under ordinary circumstances
would be reason enough to vote for Hahn. But not so fast: Hahn has
been endorsed by Maxine Waters and other kooks from the Loony Left,
which serves to illustrate the strange bedfellows this campaign
has brought together. Outgoing mayor Richard Riordan, nominally
a Republican, has offered his support to Villaraigosa in a transparently
cynical effort to woo Southern California's burgeoning Hispanic
population into the Republican fold. A campaign mailer that can
only be described as bizarre features a photograph of Riordan and
Villaraigosa with the headline "Continuing the Republican Revolution."
There will be a Holiday Inn in Havana before Villaraigosa continues
any "Republican Revolution."
So what's a
voter to do when there isn't a dime's worth of difference between
the candidates? Here's the tie-breaker in the Dunphy house: Hahn,
in an effort to secure his right flank, sought the endorsement of
the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents
officers at the rank of lieutenant and below, and of which Dunphy
is a less-than-proud yet dues-paying member. To secure that endorsement,
Hahn signed a pledge to implement a compressed work schedule for
patrol officers within ninety days of taking office. The schedule
would have officers working three twelve-hour shifts per week. Many
suburban police departments have adopted such a schedule, which
is only one reason why those departments are well stocked with former
LAPD officers. Villaraigosa counters that officers will be fatigued
by the end of the third twelve-hour day, to which I say, Stuff and
nonsense! If you've spent five days chasing the criminal rabble
through the streets of Los Angeles until one or two in the morning,
and you've sat in court until your keister was numb on three of
those days, you don't need Antonio Villaraigosa to tell you about
fatigue.
Angelenos,
how about giving Dunphy and his pals a little rest. Hold your noses
and vote for Hahn.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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