November 8, 2010
14th District Continued from page 1 Krekorian, Tom LaBonge, Tony Cardenas, Bernard Parks and Herb Wesson are locked in for four more years. Unless one is found to be running a dog-fighting ring out of his city-paid-for car and/or having an affair with Snooki from “Jersey Shore,” they can all start planning for the next term. The 12th District, the only place where an incumbent (Greig Smith chose not to go for a third term) is not running, is also essentially decided. Some four months before voters hit the polls, inside man Mitch Englander has raised more than $400,000, according to campaign disclosure statements filed last month with the City Ethics Commission. The seven “contenders” for the seat have raised, cumulatively, about $9,500. In other words, welcome to the council club Mitch. Hope it’s everything you’ve ever wanted. Make sure to be nice to Eric Garcetti, and don’t pull a Richard Alarcon and (allegedly!) live out of the district while in office. This leaves one seat and, while 14th District incumbent José Huizar is the frontrunner, the race for the post he has occupied for five years is no rubber stamp election. With a moneybags challenger and a gaggle of advisors on both sides who are used to the district’s rough-and-tumble campaigns, this one could be a bruiser. Money and Leprosy The 14th District is its own animal, though what kind of animal, I have no idea (narwhal? dodo bird?). It’s a longtime Latino power base that encompasses Boyle Heights, but also holds parts of Downtown including Broadway, which some call the “Alatorre Finger,” which is either praise or disdain for the redistricting machinations of former Council rep Richard Alatorre. It’s the rare council district where an incumbent was defeated (Nick Pacheco in 2003), though the man who beat him (Antonio Villaraigosa) got wiggly with the electorate about serving a full term (he promised he would stay, then jumped to the mayor’s office in 2005, prompting a special election in which Huizar defeated… Pacheco). Huizar’s current challenge comes from Rudy Martinez, a guy known for selling fish and making gobs of money by fixing up rundown houses. While that may not make him a man of the people, it does make him a man of means, which in an election is more important. Martinez owns the restaurants Mia Sushi in Eagle Rock and Marty’s in Highland Park (both are named for his kids). Apparently he used to blow stuff up — a picture in his campaign literature is labeled “Army Days” and shows him sitting atop a tank. More recently, he’s appeared on the Los Angeles edition of the A&E reality show “Flip This House.” That either means he’s got a head for business, or that he has a secret plan to create the new show “Flip This Council District.” Oh wait, Villaraigosa already did that one. Whatever the case, fishmongering and house flipping have been very, very good to Rudy, allowing him to loan his campaign a whopping $150,000. That’s nearly threequarters of the total $202,620 he had raised by the end of the third quarter. This is self-help to the extreme, and it kind of makes Martinez the Meg Whitman of the 14th District race. Sure, the ex-eBay blonde bomber dropped a lot more money to come in second to Brown, but when $3 of every $4 in the coffers flows from one’s own pocket, comparisons are fair. The flipside to the argument is that campaign money is like leprosy: It doesn’t matter how you got it, what’s important is that you have it. Maybe you contracted it because you’re a saint who spent three decades working in a leper colony in Sao Paolo or Santa Monica. Or maybe you acquired the disease because you quaffed 19 rum and Cokes and made out with a really hot leper. In either case, people care less about the back story than about the fact that your fingers are falling off. It’s the same with the cash unleashed in a competitive campaign. You can get 75,000 third graders to donate $2 each from their piggy banks, or you can go spelunking in your savings account and pull out 150 grand. In either case, you’ve got $150,000, and if gets Martinez elected, he’ll giggle all the way to a cushy Spring Street office. Old-Fashioned Money Huizar, meanwhile, has the power of incumbency, and like Mel Brooks said in History of the World: Part I, it’s good to be the king. The man who was re-elected in 2007 reported raising $203,274 through the end of the last campaign finance reporting period. That’s $654 more than his challenger. Boo-ya! While Martinez stopped at the International Bank of Rudy, Huizar made his money the old-fashioned way: He held fancy-pants fundraisers where anyone wanting to do business in his district knows either to show up and donate the maximum amount allowed of $500, or mail in a check. Expect Martinez to go this route as well.
DowntownNews.com Huizar has held Downtown events in the Los Angeles Theatre and the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, and the helpful flier for the former gathering indicated that someone could be a “platinum” sponsor by raising $5,000. While we don’t know who made the platinum party, those who have shoved $500 in Huizar’s direction include a bunch of unions and a batch of construction industry companies (including the Clackamas, Ore.-based Oregon Iron Works, and yes, I included that solely for the opportunity to write Clackamas). He is also getting support from Downtown development and land-owning interests such as Geoff Palmer, three members of the Astani family (Sonny Astani developed the Concerto housing project), seven people from the theater-owning Delijani clan, and even Downtown K.F.C. Inc. No telling if they also donated any of the Colonel’s original or extra crispy thighs or breasts. The Los Angeles Theatre event brought supporters to Broadway, home of Huizar’s Bringing Back Broadway ini-
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tiative, which he has called his “legacy project.” However, it’s clear he does not have a stranglehold on the stretch. Last month Joseph Hellen, a landowner who is butting heads with Huizar over a proposed supermarket/garage project, erected a huge billboard over the Cameo Theatre touting the candidacy of Martinez. This Broadway billboard broadside is the first real “Bite me!” moment in a campaign that’s going to have about 19,000 of them by the time the March 8, 2011, election rolls around. Even if Martinez didn’t coordinate it personally, it’s still a signage raspberry on Huizar’s turf. It’s the equivalent of if Huizar crept into Mia Sushi one night after closing, opened up the refrigerator, and licked every piece of sushi the fishmonger was planning to sell the next day. I’ve just created a visual that I’m having trouble erasing from my mind. It probably won’t be the last one of the campaign Contact Jon Regardie at regardie@downtownnews.com.
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