MAILANDER’S LA - Carmen Trutanich has never been my idea of even a halfway good City Attorney. I suppose it didn't help relations when one of his aides threatened me with a libel suit.
But even beyond that, his various improper bail assessments on misdemeanors appeared to me to be a naked violation of the Eighth Amendment and his Greuel-like flaunting of civic duties simply to garner some media oxygen was, well, too entirely self-servingly Greuel-like for my taste.
But now the man I have affectionately called Carmen the Clown for so many years (and of whom Steve Lopez asked if he might be "LA's Mubarek") is in real danger of losing his job outright. Outsider candidate Greg Smith has pulled to within a point of him for second in the race, and there are bushels of undecideds in this race.
I wonder how the LA Times feels now about denying Smith coverage as recently as last November. Probably remorseless. Stupid newspaper tricks.
I interviewed Smith last year and have no question that he could do the job. In a recent debate, in fact, he was obliged to remind Mike Feuer about finer points of the office. I'm not endorsing anyone in this race, but Carmen Trutanich's highly damaging flauntings of various rights of citizens leave me encouraged that somewhere in this City some people are concerned for democracy.
●●●●●
Sunday’s Time-USC Mayoral poll (with some other races too) shows some oddities. I've pointed them out on Twitter but I'll also note what I've spotted here.
First, it's five days old. A lot has happened since then. Why did they hold it to the weekend?
Second, the link to the crosstabs has been broken since it went up.
Beyond those problems, it's @ericgarcetti 27 @Wendy_Greuel 25 @James4Mayor 15 @JanPerry 14 @PleitezforLA 5.
This is not a tie as the Daily News has called it. Though the MOE is 4, the probability of it being correct is 69%. Doesn't matter so much, because the race has obviously changed much in the past five days and will change more in the next two.
Maybe the biggest anomaly is: only 1.9% of this poll is drawn from 2 CD1, and 2% from CD9. Both are minority-dominated, both have hot races. The top CDs represented are 12 and 4--a GOP district and a Democratic district--but these two districts have no ancillary council races in 2013. I think the top voting CD in 2013 will be 11, not 12, because of the race in 11.
6.8% of all Latinos in the poll have never heard of Antonio Villaraigosa. I wish I had their luck...
60% of the respondents are over age 50. So who are all those bike lanes for anyway?
A whopping 25% say they're retired. The poll includes cells and landlines, but offers no breakdown. From that result, one would expect a disproportionate amount on landlines.
Only 26% say they're Latino, but a whopping 73% say some Spanish is spoken in their home, at least the way the poll presents the numbers in its topline. What?
43% of all voters--necessarily American citizens--say they were born outside the USA.
A very odd poll, this. It seemed to try to skew to race, but not to neighborhood. In 2013, LA mostly votes by neighborhood, not by race.
(Joseph Mailander is a writer, an LA observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He is also the author of Days Change at Night: LA's Decade of Decline, 2003-2013. Mailander blogs at www.josephmailander.com.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 19
Pub: Mar 5, 2013
