Bad vs. Worse
L.A. voters choose a new mayor today.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
June 5, 2001 9:10 a.m.

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 .)