L.A. political earthquake

20 May 2009 |permalink | email article

Carmen Trutanich, a former Los Angeles County gang and environmental prosecutor, defeated City Councilman Jack Weiss in a landslide to become the next Los Angeles city attorney.

While a stunning defeat for the establishment and labor, the biggest loser was already weakened Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, facing huge budget problems, who went all out for a weak Weiss while preparing to run for governor this summer.

Trutanich, from San Pedro and in private practice for 20 years, ran on a refreshing platform of making the city attorney’s office independent of the mayor, while labeling Villaraigosa’s administration as one of the worst examples of “machine politics” in the nation.

The defeat was even more embarrassing for Police Chief Bill Bratton, already quietly lobbying for a third term, who defied the Christopher Commission report that the city’s police chief be non-political by aggressively campaigning for Weiss in television ads.

Trutanich had solid backing from law enforcement unions, District Attorney Steve Cooley and Sheriff Lee Baca. Little reported: Weiss was widely detested by rarely energized homeowner groups on the city’s West Side and in the Valley for long favoring developers and ignoring their concerns.

The Budget Vote

Arnold Schwarzenegger put his legacy on the line and lost – landslide defeats on five of six ballot measures with only the banning of pay raises for state officials wining but better than 2 to 1.

The lessons Tuesday ratified, and were demonstrated by the governor’s failure to master the tough lessons learned by many of his predecessors, that Californians don’t like their politicians. It suggests that the state is all but ungovernable, especially during a deep economic crisis.

Three expected Democratic candidates for governor next year all but ignored   the special election. Two of the three Republican candidates opposed the most contentious measure, Proposition 1A, on a spending limit and a tax hike.

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