Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Cue the music: Here she comes to save the day! On Tuesday, Jan Perry, a former Los Angeles City Councilmember, threw her hat into the race to replace Mark Ridley-Thomas as the Los Angeles County Supervisor from its Second District.
But there is so much more to this race than a capable, independent-but-agreeable and familiar name offering to serve the 2 million people in the District and help to lead more than 10 million people who live throughout the County. (Photo above: Former LA City Councilwoman Jan Perry, now candidate for LA County Supervisor.)
If she wins, it will be historic as the LA County Board of Supervisors will be run completely by women, joining its incumbents Sheila Kuehl, Janice Hahn, Kathryn Barger and Hilda Solis. While they are Caucasian and Latina, Perry is African-American as well as Jewish.
And if she wins, she will quite literally save all of us from her opponent in the race, the corruption-minded Herb Wesson of LA City Council, whose primary accomplishment in City Hall is finding six-figure government salaries for members of his family who were woefully unqualified at the time of their hiring. At that, Wesson did exceedingly well.
The two are having markedly different starts to their week.
Perry kicked off her campaign with an endorsement from none other than Bernie Parks, who served with both of them on LA City Council, after a 32-year career in the LAPD, rising from rank and file to the Chief of Police.
“Jan Perry is innovative, compassionate and views public service as a calling. Her entrance into this race is timely,” said Parks, in a campaign release. “We desperately need Jan’s integrity to combat the criminal element that has undeniably permeated our public service community in local government. I was proud to stand by her side as we both attempted to cut out City Hall corruption at its root. And today, I am proud to support her bid to become our next county Supervisor.”
And make no mistake about who Parks largely refers to when he says “corruption.” It’s Herb Wesson. (Photo left.)
On the flip side, with the current FBI corruption investigation of LA City Hall, Wesson’s media relations person Vanessa Rodriguez quit. It is telling that her outgoing email auto-reply lists accomplishments, but no references (or even thanks) to her former boss, Wesson, or anyone else in the office. Rodriguez jumped ship to work for smoking cessation/tobacco vaping giant Juul Labs. That’s ironic because Wesson is a chain smoker, whose puffing habit as I wrote earlier this week, should be investigated by the FBI for possible insurance and mail or wire fraud.
Also bad for Wesson is the unconfirmed, but un-denied, rumor that his chief of staff Deron Williams might also jump ship as a result of his name surfacing in the FBI investigation. (On second thought, maybe it’s good that Wesson has so much of his family employed in City Hall. He may need them to fill the growing roster of vacancies on his staff.)
During her tenure as LA City Councilmember, Perry may be best remembered for trying to stop the scourge and proliferation of fast food restaurants opening in poorer communities, in favor of greater access to more plentiful and fresh casual dining and grocery shopping opportunities. Since leaving office, she has held executive positions, including General Manager of the Los Angeles Economic & Workforce Development Department (EWDD) of the City of Los Angeles as well as Executive Director of the Infrastructure Funding Alliance, a national initiative to meet future infrastructure, economic development, and environmental challenges.
LA County’s Second District is by far the smallest of the five in terms of square mileage and density. It is home to impoverished cities (and unincorporated areas) that include Compton, Gardena and Lynwood, but also to resurgent economic forces like Inglewood, which is about to open the country’s biggest and best sports and entertainment complex next year. Wesson tried but failed to get a football stadium built in downtown LA, costing the city jobs, tax and tourism revenue and its long-sought point of pride, namely the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. LA’s “other” NFL team, the Chargers, opted to play this season in a tiny soccer stadium in Carson while awaiting the Inglewood complex. In other words, on Wesson’s watch, the NFL did not, and will not, come back to the City of LA in our lifetime.
But this race is about more than capability and accomplishments. While Perry has not been a controversial figure at any point of her political career, Wesson is steeped in personal and professional controversy, repeatedly defaulting on his mortgages, coming within days of losing his home despite a household income of nearly $500,000; defaulting on his credit card and refusing to pay the judgment until this column wrote about it; misusing LAPD resources for his son’s wedding; staying in office by gerrymandering the booming economic and social power of Koreatown all while continually suffocating free speech at City Council meetings, vindictively threatening arrest against dissenters, including members of Black Lives Matter and LA Community Action Network. Wesson’s residency claims have also become a source of controversy, as he refuses to explain the three addresses in which he claimed to live inside of a single month when he first ran for City Council, as well as his son’s misuse of his current address to illegally establish residency for a rumored political run.
This race is as much about the return of Jan Perry to public life with a decent and steady resume, versus Wesson, the flashy showman whose fingerprints are found all over an empty cookie jar.
It’s a battle of steady versus dubious. Let the fun begin.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Join his mailing list or offer verifiable tips and story ideas at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
