All posts by Marta Evry

Uncategorized

LA Councilmwoman Files Ethic Complaint Against Wendy Greuel, Calls Conduct “Illegal”


Former LA Councilwoman Ruth Galanter filed a formal ethics complaint today against LA City Controller and Mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel, calling the candidate’s reported use of city resources for her campaign “illegal” and an “insult to voters”.

Citing revelations by the Los Cerritos Community News that they had obtained 130 pages of emails showing the Controller using her official city email address to repeatedly communicate with campaign operatives during normal business hours, Galanter filed a complaint with the LA City Ethics Commission saying the number and frequency of the emails showed a clear pattern of deliberate and illegal use of resources.

“Ms. Greuel’s misuse of public resources is an insult to the voters and taxpayers of Los Angeles made even more egregious by the fact that we taxpayers are paying her approximately $200,000 a year, plus a free car and cellphone, to prevent just such misuse”, Galanter said.

Yesterday, the Los Cerritos Community News released all 130 pages they obtained through a FOIA request. Greuel’s office took 90 days to respond to the request, far longer than the 24 days dictated by law, and provided far fewer than the “tens of thousands of documents” Greuel’s office initially claimed were covered in LCCN’s request.

Eric Garcetti’s campaign has yet to respond to the controversy. But Rick Jacobs, founder of a political action committee to support Garcetti, called on a special investigator to release alldocuments from Greuel’s office pertaining to her mayoral campaign. 

“Wendy Greuel wants the voter’s trust to become Mayor of our city, but she’s violated that trust repeatedly by spending taxpayer’s dollars on her campaign,” said Jacobs.

Los Angeles Area

Emails Show Controller Wendy Greuel Campaigning Out Of LA City Hall Offices


LA City Controller Wendy Greuel’s campaign for mayor has come under scrutiny after a Cerritos newspaper published emails showing the Controller soliciting campaign contributions, discussing endorsements and communicating with campaign staff during office hours using her official lacity.org email address, in apparent violation of Los Angeles’ Ethics laws.

In January,  the Los Cerritos Community News sent a public records request to Greuel’s office asking for any emails between Greuel’s office and campaign managers John Shallman and Rose Kapolczynski, as well as emails from  Brian D’Arcy, the head of IBEW Local 18, whose SuperPAC, Working Californians, has spent millions in support of Greuel’s mayoral campaign.

According to LCCN, Greuel’s office initially balked at the records request saying it “was voluminous and encompasses tens of thousands of pages”, but relented after the newspaper sent a letter on April 12th threatening to file a lawsuit.

In the end, LCCN received only 130 pages of material, including dozens of emails sent to and from various campaign staff and contributors using Greuel’s official governmental email address during normal business hours.

Campaign consultants I talked with said such activity violates section 49.5.5b of the LA Municipal Code which states:

“No City official or employee of an agency shall engage in campaign-related activities, such as fundraising, the development of electronic or written materials, or research, for a campaign for any elective office or ballot measure

  1. during the hours for which he or she is receiving pay to engage in City

    business or 
  2. using City facilities, equipment,

    supplies or other City resources.

“The emails confirm that Greuel is running her mayoral campaign out of the Auditor/Contoller’s Office of Los Angeles using taxpayer resources, a clear violation of California state law,” said Brian Hews, President of Hews Media Group, and Publisher of Los Cerritos Community Newspaper. “The emails document in great detail how Wendy Greuel is using one of the most powerful offices in the City of Los Angeles to leverage campaign support, coordinate political events, and garner major endorsements from some of the biggest political forces in Southern California,”

Greuel campaign spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson characterized the email exchanges using Greuel’s governmental email address as “inadvertent”.

“As Controller and as a candidate for Mayor, Wendy Greuel has worked 18-hour days for quite some time. She inadvertently forwarded a few emails when using her personal iPad or iPhone and most of the emails were for scheduling purposes or as an FYI including documents that were scheduled for public release,” Wilkinson said in a written statement.

However, the emails include numerous conversations between a Who’s Who of political players in Los Angeles, Greuel’s campaign staff, campaign contributors and the staff of the Controller’s office discussing everything from scheduling issues to how to handle media relations. And in one case, Greuel may have violated yet another statute prohibiting the sharing of confidential information acquired in the course of her official duties when she forwarded a Preliminary Financial Report her office prepared for fiscal year 2011-2012 to her campaign staff two and a half hours before giving the document to Mayor Villaraigosa, the City Council and the City Clerk.

An investigation from the LA Ethics Commission of these issues will likely take months, stretching well past Election Day. Regardless of their findings the damage may already be done.

During the campaign, Greuel has tried to portray herself as the best candidate to root out “waste, fraud and abuse” in City Hall, and in recent days stepped up her attacks against opponent Eric Garcetti, attempting to tie him to developer Juri Ripinksy, a convicted felon, and also claiming Garcetti had taken “illegal” votes on a Clear Channel billboard settlement. It’s unclear how much traction these claims will have once LCCN’s allegations are more widely known.

A poll released by the LA Times on Sunday showed Garcetti leading Greuel by 10 points.

Uncategorized

Henry Waxman Throws Constituents Under The Wheels Of An Oncoming Jumbo Jet

This weekend, Congresswoman Maxine Waters stood in front of a room full of constituents and activists and did something extraordinary – she declared war on fellow Congress Member Henry Waxman.

Addressing a meeting of the Westchester Democratic club on Saturday, Waters told the packed room that Waxman secretly circulated a letter from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in support of expanding Los Angeles’ International Airport to Congressional colleagues only a day after telling Waters he had not yet made up his mind about the issue. Waters accused Waxman of forming an “unholy alliance” with the Chamber and the construction trades to expand Los Angeles International Airport – a move that some experts believe would create region-wide traffic gridlock.

Waters, who represents the communities directly surrounding LAX supports modernizing, but not expanding, the airport.

I was on hand to record Waters’ remarks. Watch it: http://vimeo.com/62625350

The Chamber is promoting a plan which could expand capacity at LAX by up to 14 million passengers a year, and is advocating moving the North runway several hundred feet, a move some experts say would force the closure of parts of Lincoln and Sepulveda Blvds for at least 2 years, and perhaps even permanently.

Such closures would force thousands of cars onto other surface streets and nearby freeways, creating a near constant “carmageddon” scenario as traffic backed up onto the 405, 105 and 10 freeways, potentially affecting commuters as far away as Orange County, the Valley and Downtown Los Angeles.

The move is also backed by many of Los Angeles’ biggest labor unions, who see expansion as a job-creating engine for the region. Airport opponents say a multi-billion dollar plan to modernize the airport without moving the runway would create just as many jobs.

In a highly unusual move that signaled just how seriously Waters took Waxman’s end-run, Waters very publicly threatened to take the fight to the Congressman’s own district, calling into question Waxman’s motives for being the bag man for an “unholy alliance between organized labor and the Chamber of Commerce”

“Now I can’t say this is why Mr. Waxman is doing what he’s doing,” said Waters.  “But these are the two places they go for money – the Chamber…..and organized labor. And so some of these elected officials don’t feel they can be independent and fight. They say, ‘Hey, you know, this is too difficult, after all, they’ve come together on this issue’.”

Waters then encouraged her constituents  in the room to reach out to their counterparts in Waxman’s district.

“I want you to find all the community activists in his district and ask them to join with us. I want them to call him and tell him to get his nose out of Westchester’s business. He’s thinking, ‘Well, it’s not my district, so I don’t have to worry about my constituents on this issue. I can do what ever I want.'”

“But we have to turn that around. Get busy. I will remind him, every day, that we’re after him.”, Waters said, smiling.

Waters strategy, though unusually pointed and public, might be effective. Last November, Henry Waxman faced the fight of his life when he suddenly found himself representing the beach cities on either side of LAX due to redistricting.  Rather than cruise to victory virtually unopposed, as he had nearly every year since he was first elected to Congress in 1975 to represent constituents in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, the 17-term Congressman narrowly fended off Manhattan Beach resident Bill Bloomfield.

Uncategorized

Silly Season Arrives In The Race To Be Los Angeles Mayor

Jan Perry attacks Wendy Greuel for not being an in-utero Democrat,  Greuel attacks Eric Garcetti for making  $1.25 off an oil-lease that’s never been used, Garcetti attacks Greuel for fudging her numbers, Gruel attacks Perry for fudging her personal finances, the lone Republican candidate Kevin James accuses both Garcetti and Greuel for being grave robbers and long-shot candidate Emanuel Pleitez is literally running around like a chicken with his head cut off.

With 4 days to go until the March 5th election, silly season has officially arrived in the race to be Los Angeles’ next mayor.

Although conventional wisdom says it’ll be Garcetti and Greuel in the runoff, the candidate’s behavior this week indicates they think the race may be more of a tossup than is being reported. So with independent expenditures reaching into the stratosphere and voter turnout descending into the basement, candidates are clawing for any advantage they can get.

So far, independent groups and SuperPACs have poured more than $3 million into the LA mayor’s race, $2.5 million of that in support of Wendy Greuel – with the lion’s share coming from Working Californians, a SuperPAC formed by IBEW local 18, the union which represents over 8,000 employees for the Department of Water and Power.

What has all that money bought? TV ads. Lots and lots of TV ads. Including this one, which shows footage of Garcetti singing an off-key version of “White Christmas” while a narrator hits the councilman for staying at “five-star hotels,” having “seven city cars” and for taking “money from neighborhood streets for more personal staff.”

Watch it here:

Pretty funny stuff. Garcetti may have a musical background, but a great singer, not so much. The added mic feedback is an especially nice touch.

And it would be a pretty standard attack ad – except for one thing –  the footage of Garcetti came from a 2011 charity event at the Garden Crest Rehabilitation Center in Silver Lake.

He was singing to Alzheimer’s patients.


Garden Crest is (Pay It Forward Volunteer Band founder) Gary Gamponia’s modelnursing home. The staff cares. The schedule is varied and full. They welcome outsiders, and on this day, even L.A. City Councilman Eric Garcetti pays a visit to take a turn on the keyboards and sing.

Garcetti’s grandparents were musicians, he says, and with his grandmother, “I just remember some of the last ways we ever connected were through music.”…..

A few years back,Gamponia, who has mostly earned a living selling insurance, tried to create a cooperative that would help musicians out and then have them return the favor by performing at community events.

He lent equipment, negotiated deep discounts on instrument repair and drove people to gigs when their cars broke down. But the giving was one-way, he says. Then, around Christmas 2009, he had a simpler notion: Why not just form a band to bring music to the places that could use it most?

He called the office of his councilman, Garcetti, for ideas and got the names of several nursing homes. And he enlisted a ragtag band of old friends and new acquaintances made on Craigslist.

Here’s an excerpt of that performance here, put up by Garden Crest:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/A…

So welcome to silly season in the LA Mayor’s race. Where anything can and will be held against a candidate to be used in the court of public opinion – even singing to elderly Alzheimer’s patients at Christmas.

Budget

Protesters Deliver Over 21K Signatures To Demanding Mayor Villaraigosa Resign From Fix the Debt

3 Comments

by Marta Evry

In a sign that progressive push-back against Los Angeles Mayor Villariagosa’s membership in the right-wing “Fix The Debt” lobbying group isn’t abating, activists from MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered over 21,000 signatures to LA City Hall this afternoon demanding Villariagosa resign from the group’s steering committee.

“They call themselves bipartisan because they’re able to buy members of both parties,” said Richard Eskow, a blogger for the Campaign for America’s Future.

“The primary agenda for these folks is to lower taxes for millionaires, billionaires and corporations,” he said.

In a scathing Huffington Post article about the Campaign To Fix the Debt’s agenda, Eskow was even more blunt, “Let’s be clear: This crowd doesn’t really care about deficits. It never has. It’s an anti-tax group which pursues its goals by fighting to downsize government programs and “reform” the Internal Revenue code. Its natural allies are the Republican Party, the nation’s mega-corporations, and billionaires.”

Besides MoveOn.org and the PCCC, the Calfornia-based Courage Campaign has also called on Villaraigosa to resign from the group.

“The so-called ‘Campaign to Fix the Debt’ is nothing more than a front group to protect tax cuts for the wealthy while balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and elderly,” said founder Rick Jacobs.  “The fact that Mayor Villaragosa, or any other Democrat that claims to want to protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, would join this effort is nothing short of shameful….Mayor Villaragosa should resign immediately.”

Last week, Villaraigosa defended his decision to join fix the debt. “I am a Democrat and a progressive, but you know what? The country is evenly divided.  They won too,” Villaraigosa told CNN, referring to Republican lawmakers.

Angela Garcia Combs, a native Angeleno and former volunteer for the Mayor who started the petition, said she decided to deliver the signatures today after staff from Villaraigosa’s office told her it would take at least three months to schedule an appointment.

She promised today’s action wouldn’t be the end of it. “Any Politician that calls themselves a Democrat, Progressive, Centrist,Bipartisan, we are putting you on notice too. We are coming after you if you join this group,” said Combs.

“Joining the Steering committee of Fix the Debt is like saying I’m joining the steering committee of the Titanic to help all those poor people in the water.”

On Facebook, Villaraigosa again defended his membership in Fix the Debt, attempting to clarify his position on so-called ‘entitlement reform’.

“Let me be very clear: I oppose the privatization of Social Security. I oppose turning Medicare into voucher care,” said Villaraigosa. “I oppose dismantling Medicaid. I support letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the top 2%.”

However, a spokesman for the Mayor’s office told KPCC Villaraigosa was open to raising the retirement age for Social Security and other  federal benefits.

Uncategorized

Villaraigosa Defends Association With “Fix the Debt” As 11K Califorinians Sign Protest Petition

1 Comment

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa defended his decision to join The Campaign to Fix the Debt even as an online petition demanding he resign from its steering committee approached 11,000 signatures.

“As a progressive Democrat, I joined the Campaign to Fix the Debt because Democrats and Republicans need to come together to find a balanced approach to our fiscal future,” Villaraigosa said in a statement to the LA Times.” There are tough decisions ahead and the only way that we are going to find long-term solutions is by stepping out of our ideological boxes and reaching out to a broader coalition to get something done”

The Institute for Policy Studies has called Fix the Debt a ‘Trojan Horse for massive corporate tax breaks’.Scott Klinger, who wrote the IPS report critical of the lobby group said, “They’re simply taking advantage of the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ to push the same old agenda of more corporate tax breaks while shifting costs onto the poor and elderly.”

Founded by deficit hawks Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (co-chairs of Erksine/Bowles 2010 deficit-reduction commission) the Campaign to Fix the Debt claims to be a “bipartisan” interest group, yet touts the very Republican “core principles” of keeping tax rates low for the wealthy while slashing Social Security and Medicare.

Klinger’s report paints a stark picture of what Villaraigosa has signed up to defend:

  • Make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.
  • Cut corporate tax rates and shifting to a “territorial tax system”

    that would permanently exempt from U.S. taxes all offshore income earned

    by U.S. corporations.
  • “Reforming” earned-benefit programs by raising the retirement age

    and means-testing Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security benefits.

In only 36 hours, 11,000 people have signed on to a petition begun by a former Villaraigosa campaign volunteer demanding he resign.

“As somebody who volunteered and knocked on doors to help elect for Mayor Villaraigosa, I feel disappointed and betrayed, ” states Angela Garcia Combs in the petition. “As former chair of the Democratic National Convention, it is inappropriate that Villaraigosa use his position to help this corporate backed group gut Social Security and Medicare, which many of us will need someday.”

The politically ambitious Villaraigosa is termed out of office in 2013, and has made noises he wants to run for Governor of California in 2014.

But by signing on as a progressive “beard” for corporate interests, he’ll be on the wrong side of the “core principles” of another interest group. Namely the coalition of working Californians,public sector unions, and progressive organizations fighting for economic justice who’ve traditionally backed Villaraigosa.

The LA Weekly immediately picked up on Villaraigosa’s hypocrisy when they ran with the story yesterday afternoon.

Set aside for the moment the balls required for Villaraigosa to pretend to be a deficit hawk. His handling of L.A.’s municipal finances is a matter of record.

Let’s instead look more closely at the “balanced approach” advocated by Fix the Debt, especially its “pro-growth” tax reform ideas. What counts as “pro-growth”? Well, any reform that “broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues, and reduces the deficit.”

Wait wait wait, go back. Lowers rates? Is this a deficit-cutting plan or a tax-cutting plan? Let’s turn it over to Paul Krugman

That last part makes no sense in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.

In the same vein, Matt Yglesias argues at Slate that Fix the Debt is not really that concerned about fixing the debt: “What they believe in, instead, is the overwhelmingimportance of rate-cutting tax reform and reduced spending on retirement programs.”

You’d think that Antonio Villaraigosa, an ostensible liberal, would want to pay attention to those voices. Evidently not.

Perhaps he will if we all shout a bit louder. Click on this link to sign the petition

Budget

Villariagosa Partners With Wall Street To Throw Californians Off The “Fiscal Cliff”

4 Comments

The last time Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made national headlines he looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi as the Democratic National Convention he chaired descended into chaos.

This time he’s making national headlines for joining the steering committee of “Fix the Debt”, a high-profile lobbying group whose “core principles” include keeping tax rates low for the wealthy while slashing Social Security and Medicare. Founded by deficit hawks Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (co-chairs of Erksine/Bowles 2010 deficit-reduction commission) the Campaign to Fix the Debt claims to be a “bipartisan” interest group, and is trying to influence ongoing fiscal cliff budget negotiations taking place in Washington D.C.right now.

“If we’re serious about long-term economic growth, we need a balanced approach for reducing the federal debt,” said Villaraigosa in a press release. “That approach should include spending cuts, raising revenue and reforms that put our entitlement programs on a sustainable footing. The Campaign to Fix the Debt is dedicated to reminding all Americans that we can’t reduce the debt and create the conditions for long-term job creation without working across party lines to find practical solutions.”

If you want to know what some of those “practical solutions” Villaraigosa will be lobbying for might look like, follow the money. Fix The Debt’s $42 million war-chest is funded almost exclusively by Big Business CEO’s notorious for underfunding their employee’s pension plans, Wall Street executives who support privatizing Social Security, and virulent anti-tax lobbyists.

“These CEOs paint a stark picture of hypocrisy,” said Scott Klinger of the Institute for Policy Studies, who co-authored a report which called Fix the Debt a ‘Trojan Horse for massive corporate tax breaks’.

“They’re simply taking advantage of the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ to push the same old agenda of more corporate tax breaks while shifting costs onto the poor and elderly.”

Klinger’s report paints a stark picture of what Villaraigosa has signed up to defend:

  • Make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.
  • Cut corporate tax rates and shifting to a “territorial tax system” that would permanently exempt from U.S. taxes all offshore income earned by U.S. corporations.
  • “Reforming” earned-benefit programs by raising the retirement age and means-testing Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security benefits.

The politically ambitious Villaraigosa is termed out of office in 2013, and is no doubt fishing around for his next gig.  With limited options in California, perhaps he thinks The Campaign to Fix the Debt will burnish his national profile and launch him into a cabinet position with the Obama administration.

Perhaps. But by signing on as a progressive “beard” for corporate interests, he’ll be on the wrong side of this fight in the eyes of the coalition of working Angelenos, public sector unions, and progressive organizations fighting for economic justice who’ve traditionally backed Villaraigosa.

“Fix the Debt is a creature of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the Wall Street Engineers of the the economic crisis we elected Barack Obama to get us out of, ” said Rick Jacobs,  founder of the California Courage Campaign. “I hope the President will pay attention to the voters and not those who put us into this mess.”

Uncategorized

Speaker John Perez Still Prioritizing Incumbents Over Reaching A 2/3rds Marjority In The Assembly

5 Comments
Assembly Speaker John Perez

After a day of headache-induced number-crunching I hoped I’d have better news to report today, but it appears Speaker Perez and Sacramento Democrats are still prioritizing the reelection of safe incumbents over achieving a two-thirds super majority in the California Assembly

Democrats currently enjoy a majority in both the Assembly and the State Senate, but would have to pick up at least two more seats in each chamber to achieve the super-majority needed to pass revenue increases over the objections of an obstructionist Republican minority.

Yet campaign finance reports reveal that Speaker Perez, Sacramento Democratic lawmakers and state and county Democratic campaign committees have spent nearly half a million dollars more defending two safe democratic seats this election cycle than they have in defending a Los Angeles coastal district against a possible Tea Party takeover.

In the 10th Assembly District (Marin, D+35) Sacramento Democrats donated $925K to Mike Allen, an incumbent Assembly member who moved into the  open district when his existing district was carved up and  reapportioned. Mr. Allen’s opponent is Marc Levine, a fellow Democrat.

In the 50th Assembly district (Santa Monica, D+33), Sacramento Democrats donated $601K to Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, who moved north to the Democratic stronghold after redistricting meant she’d have to run in the new, more conservative 66th Assembly district (Torrance, D+3). Like Allen, Butler is running against Democratic challenger (Santa Monica Mayor, Richard Bloom).

In the South Bay, Torrance School Board member Al Muratsuchi became the Democratic candidate for AD66 after Betsy Butler left the district.  Election experts consider the race highly competitive for Republicans, giving them the best opportunity in two decades to pick up a seat in that area.

Before the June primary, few Sacramento Democrats, including both John Perez and Betsy Butler had made any financial contributions to Muratsuchi, forcing the candidate to loan his campaign $45,000 to defend the new South Bay Assembly seat against two Tea Party candidates, Nathan Mintz, who ran and lost a close race against Butler in 2010, and Craig Huey, who ran an unsuccessful $500,000 self-financed congressional campaign against Janice Hahn last year.

After the June primary however, Sacramento finally began investing in Muratsuchi’s campaign, donating $967K to help defeat opponent Craig Huey. Clearly, a huge improvement, but will it be enough? The most recent campaign finance reports show Muratsuchi and Huey are almost dead even in the amount of cash they have on hand.

Eric Bauman, Vice-Chair of the California Democratic Party, says the AD66 race is the party’s “number one” priority. And if you compare these three races in isolation, that statement is correct.

The bigger problem, however, is Perez and Sacramento Democrats aren’t making a two-thirds majority their “number one” priority at all. Not when they’re spending $500K more on two absolutely safe Democratic seats than they are to defend a competitive swing-district seat that could fall under Republican control.

UPDATE

Sacramento responds via Twitter. Steve Maviglio is a Democratic political consultant for John Perez,  former Deputy Chief of Staff to Speakers Karen Bass and Fabian Nunez, and former press secretary to Gov. Gray Davis.

Uncategorized

John Perez’s AD50 Candidate Betsy Butler Loses 2nd Local Endorsement In Less Than A Week

8 Comments
AD50 Candidate Betsy Butler

During the primary Assembly Speaker John Perez and his allies in Sacramento poured over a million dollars into the 50th Assembly District to ensure incumbent Betsy Butler made it onto the November ballot. At first blush, Sacramento’s largess worked, buying the Assemblywoman a first-place finish in the 4-way race. Yet a closer look reveals how that victory came at enormous cost.

Less than 1% separated first-place Butler with last-place opponent Democrat Torie Osborn, and only 137 votes separated Butler from 2nd-place finisher Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom (also a Democrat), who will now face off against the Assemblywoman in November. Bloom spent less than a $150,000 in the primary.

The big question now is if Perez will continue to pour resources into a guaranteed safe Democratic district, or will shift his focus to swing districts like AD66 in Los Angeles’ South Bay, where Democrat Al Muratsuchi faces a tough election against Tea Party Republican Craig Huey. The California GOP considers the district a “must” win and has already started funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to the South Bay millionaire.

Perez is keeping his intentions pretty close to the vest, but if statements from Butler are any indication, Muratsuchi may be on his own. Butler has repeatedly tried to tamp down expectations that the Assembly can reach the 2/3rds majority needed to overcome Republican obstruction, saying she expects the Assembly to come up “one seat short”. She’s declined to discuss which seat that might be.

It might be worth noting at this point that as of the last campaign finance report filing, neither Butler nor Perez have donated to Muratsuchi’s campaign.

Butler’s recent struggles with local activists also doesn’t bode well for Muratsuchi’s chances – because if past performance is any indication of future actions, Perez will come to the sitting Assemblywoman’s rescue at the cost of losing AD66.

In a surprise upset, Betsy Butler lost her bid last Wednesday for the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills Democratic Club endorsement for the 50th Assembly District race. Despite the fact Butler faced virtually no organized opposition and had packed the lightly attended meeting with friends, campaign workers and supporters, she was unable to garner the votes needed to win the endorsement.

Remarkably, Butler received only 25 votes at the meeting, 3 less than when she lost to primary opponent Torie Osborn.

After the results were tabulated, Butler and her supporters demanded a do-over of sorts, with West Hollywood Mayor (and Butler supporter) Jeffrey Prang putting forward a motion to table the vote and hold a new one in August.

Then on Sunday, opponent Richard Bloom successfully blocked Butler from winning the coveted Santa Monica for Renters Rights (SMRR) endorsement.

As with the WeHo/Beverly Hills Club endorsement, Butler was widely expected to easily walk away with a win. During the AD50 primary, Bloom snubbed SMRR’s endorsement meeting, claiming irregularities and lack of transparency in the endorsement process. Bloom’s actions during the primary rankled the board’s membership, creating a rift Bloom would have to work hard to overcome in the general election.

But in the end, SMRR’s membership remained ambivalent and divided. Butler wasn’t able to reach the 55% threshold needed to secure an endorsement.

Lastly, on Monday night, Butler came dangerously close to losing the endorsement of the Stonewall Democratic club, but the vote was called off at the last minute and rescheduled when irregularities were discovered in the membership list.

So it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out between now and November. In an era of horrific budget cuts and the shredding of California’s social safety net, it’s clear the only way out of this mess is for Democrats to receive a super-majority in both houses of the legislature.

So going forward, the question for Perez and Butler is this: What’s more important, your jobs…..or the future of California?  

Uncategorized

John Perez Wins A Battle Against Torie Osborn, But Loses The War For 2/3rds

6 Comments

With 100% of precincts reporting, the race for the 50th Assembly District ended with an upset, with community organizer Torie Osborn ending up in third place, and the Democratic Mayor of Santa Monica, Richard Bloom and Democratic Assemblywoman Betsy Butler surviving the June primary – only to face each other again in November.

Butler squeaked into first place by only 102 votes.

Her boss, Assembly Speaker John Perez, spent over a million dollars to get Butler those votes. But while he was busy waging a war against Torie Osborn in AD50, he lost the war for AD66, and ultimately the 2/3rds majority Democrats desperately needed to break Republican obstruction in Sacramento.

Let me explain.

The Democratic candidate in AD66, Al Muratsuchi, came in first against his Republican opponents and will face off against millionaire Republican Craig Huey in the fall. But while good news for Democrats in the short-run, the numbers look dismal for Muratsuchi in November.

With 100% of precincts reporting,Muratsuchi garnered 22,000 votes while his Republican opponents Huey and Nathan Mintz combined received nearly 33,000 votes. Mintz will certainly endorse Huey, so expect Republican voters to fall in line for the general election.

That’s a hell of an enthusiasm gap to overcome.

Muratsuchi received virturally no support from Sacramento even as Perez publicly  declared the Santa Monica/West Hollywood race his top priority, securing the California Democratic Party endorsement for Butler at the February convention, then directing or pressuring Assembly members, Sacramento unions, and PACS to dump over a million dollars into the safe blue seat.

What that means in real-world terms is that while Sacramento squandered it’s resources in AD50, there was nothing left over to help South Bay activists register voters or build any infrastructure to get out the vote. It’s a deficit that, even if corrected now, will haunt the district through the fall.

What remains to be seen is if Perez will bother to correct that deficit at all. In fact, it’s far more likely he will continue this destructive pattern into the general election.

Victory in November isn’t assured for Butler. By all accounts, she proved to be a terrible campaigner in the AD50 race, relying almost entirely on Sacramento’s largess to get her through the June primary. It’s anyone’s guess as to how she will do against Bloom, who has the advantage of real – not manufactured – incumbency in the district.

As Sacramento contemplates even more draconian cuts to education, healthcare, social services and environmental protection, the legacy of these two races will be a stunning indictment of Assembly Speaker John Perez’s lack of leadership.