LOS ANGELES — The campaigning for the L.A. City Mayor and a number of other offices and Propositions is over. Now that the dust has settled, we find that Los Angeles City Councilman, Eric Garcetti has clearly won over his opponent, City Controller, Wendy Gruel.
Despite the bloated support of ex-President Bill Clinton, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and the former Mayor Riodan, Gruel managed to lose. Part of the voter anger was directed against the Boss Tweed kind of union leadership at the Department of Water and Power, which controls both the Mayor’s office and City Council—a union that has never displayed any working class solidarity with the other city unions or other labor struggles in Los Angeles.
One outstanding victory of the L.A. Unified School Board race was that of Monica Radcliff a genuine teacher and lawyer over corporatist Antonio Sanchez, protégé of Mayor Villaraigosa who is leaving office with the city in tremendous debt.
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg, billionaire Koch Brothers and a host of big business and others put millions into Sanchez’s campaign while only volunteers from the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) put the foot-work and effort into the race for Monica. UTLA endorsed both candidates and were warned by State Teacher’s leaders in Sacramento that failure to support Sanchez would bring about a series of bills to weaken teachers unions and seniority. Therefore UTLA could not donate any money to the campaign.
Los Angeles also passed an advisory vote against the Citizens United Supreme Court decision-Prop C and other measures regarding the marijuana industry.
Another important victory was in the Los Angeles Community College District race—former Green and environmentalist Nancy Pearlman emerged the victor despite the AFT and Democratic Party supporting her opponent with millions of dollars.
Finally, despite the low turnout in the Primary, it stands as a record that—out of 4 million people in Los Angeles—only 200,000 bothered to vote. This reflects that voters were turned off by slick flyers, TV ads, etc. It must be said that elections don’t prove there is Democracy—Democracy would have campaign finance reform, Ranked voting, and proportional representation. Also, in California a draconian bill, Proposition 14 passed, which only allows the most heavily financed candidates to proceed to the General Election—surprise! That leaves out the third parties. This is a dictatorship of the two-party system.
