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Decisions, Decisions: Vote We Must (shudder)
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 About 100 hours from now, the sleeping army of Los Angeles voters will arise from its torpor to greet election day. The ones of us who give a damn, anyway.
Those of us not overwhelmed by apathy or nauseated by two crummy choices for L..A. mayor will stumble to the polls like Romero zombies - full of ravenous hunger and grim purpose but long ago having forgotten the reason why we must feed. Duuutyyyyy we'll moan, all glassy-eyed and soulless.
And then we'll do what we must - vote in the next mayor of Los Angeles. There are so many prisms through which to view this election - so few of them providing useful or even appealing views of our future.
Campaign ads? Pulling meaningful facts from this fetid swamp of mutual character assassination is about as much fun as brokering a Mideast peace deal. The venom oozing from the campaigns of Mayor Jim Hahn and Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa poisons any real message they have beyond "Vote for me, my opponent's a sleazebag ..."
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You can parse the various charges if you like - Antonio's return of $47,000 in donations from the strangely-interested-in-L.A. citizens of Miami, Florida versus the $300,000-plus that Jim still won't return to donors after one of them was fingered for money-laundering. Hahn's charge that Villaraigosa failed to pass a law against child-killers countered by Villaraigosa's ad claiming he actually backed a tougher law. (Copley News Service's industrious David Zahniser has a good account of those spots.)
Or you can go back to happier, simpler times when the candidates' TV spots actually had something to say about themselves.
Feel any better prepared to vote intelligently?
How about the campaign mailers? You've got your heartwarming vignettes: the former foster child and minimum-wage janitor whom Hahn inexplicably transformed into an apprentice ironworker (mailer paid for by Laborers Local 300).
And you've got your big guns: the platoon of women leaders who say "it's time for a change" to Villaraigosa (Boxer, Kuehl, Bass, Galanter, Harman, Bowen, NOW L.A., United Teachers Los Angeles, etc. etc.)
If you prefer, you can consider the backers - the big name endorsements meant to sway the conscience of people who aren't sure with whom they should side. Hahn's got the Police Protective League, the firefighters union (and every other union, almost), Eli Broad and (heh) Walter Moore while Villaraigosa's got the Democratic party of L.A., the Sierra club and some gawky Massachusetts bureaucrat named John Kerry.
Nope, no real help there on figuring out your choices.
Then there are the newspaper endorsements - lukewarm at best (the Times, Weekly and Daily News all backed Villaraigosa).
And in the end, you can turn to what the men said live on television in the debates, when caught flat-footed with questions about their records, their opponents and their visions for L.A.'s future.
I gave up on blogging the debates live after the primary. Here are some cynical posts about the runoff debates (1, 2, 3). But here - perhaps of more use - are my transcripts of the primary debates (1, 2, 3, 4).
Of course, you don't have to vote for either of these compromised, shifty career politicians, who won't even level with the voters about what they do all day in furtherance of their campaigns.
You can always write in the person you think would be the best mayor for us for the next four years. BoifromTroy suggests Laura Chick. Can't say I disagree, though maybe we should consider voting to keep LAPD Chief William Bratton in town.
No, sorry, voters. There's no good way to go in this election. I endorse voting your conscience, wherever that may lie. At least that way we'll get the mayor we deserve.
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Friday, May 13, 2005 - 11:53 AM
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