Late Night Martinis In The 14th
Joe Mailander at Martini Republic shows why he is the king of late night blogging with an excellent "Overnighter" piece about Brian Heckmann, another also-ran for the 14th Council District, amongst the big name candidates of whom we don't need to mention again.Mailander essays the unlikely campaign of an unknown, Anglo, Republican candidate in a district that is overwhelmingly Latino and Democrat. The former Michican resident tells Mailander that he thinks he can build a diverse coalition amongst the common concern over public safety.
Earlier, Mailander had a similarly interesting interview with another lesser known 14th District candidate, Ruby Baxter De Vera.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 10/05/2005 01:20:00 AM
12 Comments:
Mailander-Who do these two candidates take votes from, Pacheco or Huizar?
That's a funny question -- overhead (for REAL), in BOTH camps in recent weeks. . .
At Pacheco's "Huizar's probably going to pick up a lot of the Republicans"
At Huizar's "Pacheco's seen as 'less progressive' by the 1 in 5 voters that are GOP-types. Those those actually voye are more likely to go his way in the end."
HA!
I don't know who they'll end up taking votes from, but I do know they both talk more about Jose than Nick.
My opinion: Nick is ahead. Jose represents a slightly lower hurdle for the third and fourth placers. So we'll see more inquiry into Jose's work at LAUSD at the candidate fora by the three contenders.
Interestingly, I EagleRockObserved a modest Ruby sign last night at the gas station at the highly visible corner of Colorado and Eagle Rock. At Heckmann HQ (his home), I EagleRockObserved about fifty Heckmann signs in the living room, ready to go.
But don't forget to look at that map of Antonio (red) and Hahn (green) concentrations by precinct. If I were Heckmann especially, I'd head straight for the green.
Good observation Mailander. I also agree that currently Nick is ahead.
The volunteer recruitment staff and consultants are in full gear at pacheco camp, huizar camp still needs to find a person who can motivate the volunteers.
WHY hasn't Ruby B.D. filed any financial disclosures yet? What's with that?
Will people vote for someone who's not being transparent with where her support is coming from?
If she's the one with decades of experience, why is the paperwork missing?
AND, does anyone know what happens to a candidate that doesn't file their $$ papers on time?
Any more candidate forums coming up? I hear the people squabbling over the Northeast hillside development ordinance (that scuttled the El Pueblo nominee), and that AV's people dropped the ball on so badly at the CM office are having one this month.
That should get some combustion flying in the skies over dry hillside grasses in CD14. Call the SLOs and rent some body armor candidates.
tick...tick...tick...Anyone who thinks Nick is ahead now needs to reexamine their rectum.
The great thing about lawn signs, is that there are one of the biggest waste of campaign cash out there, lawn signs don't vote, and neither do the folks that sport them.
Art Pulido and his cronies feel lawn sign campaigns are the way to go, "because thats how you win campaigns out here", blah, blah, blah.
You know what wins campaigns? Voter contacts pure and simple -- and the Huizar crew are focused and diciplined and know not to read this lame-ass website. We've seen what happens when you do, Pacheco loses his campaign consultant and political director. Pacheco has a way of losing talent right before election day, remember his last city council election?
Pacheco = Hahn "pay to play light"
Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market
In his last days in office, Nick Pacheco and Jim Hahn pushed through a no-bid sale of the city-owned Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market that robbed Los Angeles taxpayers of at least $2 million. Now Pacheco’s campaign is being funded by merchants of the market who became co-op owners through the sale.
Pacheco Pushes Produce Market Sale
According to the LA Times, pushed the sale of the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, which the city owned since the mid-1980’s, for several years. In 2002, the Council determined that the sale should go forward without competitive bidding.
The city built the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market in the 1980s after local wholesale produce vendors threatened to leave the city in search of a better facility. Since then, 25 vendors have operated out of the market, selling vegetables and fruit.
For the last two years, Pacheco has been pushing the city to sell the produce market, hoping to use the money to finance the construction of the Youth Opportunities Center in Boyle Heights, a facility that would house programs to help at-risk youths.
(Matea Gold, “Some Question Deal to Fund Firefighters,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2003)
Produce Market Tenants Contributed $10K to Pacheco’s Campaign
The Times also reported that the deal would benefit Pacheco’s campaign contributors. Tenants at the market had contributed $10,000 to Pacheco.
The sale will benefit a group of Pacheco's political contributors who lease the 30-acre Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, a sprawling complex on Olympic Boulevard that the city has owned since the 1980s.
…The tenants include several wholesale produce operators who have donated more than $10,000 to Pacheco's campaigns. Mayor James K. Hahn, and Council President Alex Padilla have also received substantial contributions.
(Matea Gold, “Some Question Deal to Fund Firefighters,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2003)
Rival Developer Pledged to Pay $2 Million More
When the Council decided to sell the market, it opted not to conduct an open bidding process to secure the maximum sale price for the market. After the City appraised the market at $18 million, a rival developer pledged to pay $2 million more.
NOW PACHECO RECEIVES THOUSANDS IN CAMPAIGN DONATIONS
Nick Pacheco’s first campaign contributions come from these same tenants who benefited from the no-bid sale he pushed through. Pacheco’s very first campaign report shows him receiving thousands of dollars in donations from the following tenants.
3:06
This was disproved and refuted heavily in an old thread, more than once (where's the 2nd "80 watches" guy with the pretty picture -- I think he snuffed this out).
Pretty chicken shit to keep bringing back the "accusation" and ignore the explanation.
Parke taught you well (but not good).
Huizar = Hahn "pay to play heavy"
How is Huizar's relationship now with all those building contractors than paid him THOUSANDS of contributions for his second term on LAUSD. The one's who wanted the inside lane for school building jobs.
(California Clean Money Campaign says, "Get motivated by news about the corruptive effects of campaign contributions". . .)
Los Angeles Times,
February 22nd, 2005
Unopposed, School Board Leader Still Raises Funds
L.A. Unified's Jose Huizar collects more than $330,000, much of it from the building trades.
By Cara Mia DiMassa, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Board of Education President Jose Huizar has raised more than $330,000 for his reelection, much of it from construction-related companies and individuals involved in the school district's massive school building program.
Huizar, who spent about $194,000 on his first election in 2001, is running unopposed next month, as are two other school board members.
But unlike his colleagues, Huizar - who is considered a rising political star with ambitions of running for higher office - continued to raise money after his only opponent dropped out. Three weeks after that candidate withdrew, a fundraiser for Huizar with mostly construction- related companies netted nearly $50,000, city records show.
Additionally, Huizar's largest campaign contributor last year was the teachers union, which gave him $32,500.
Huizar, who initially referred comments about contributions to his campaign manager but later agreed to an interview, said he wanted to build a broad coalition of supporters - rather than rely on any one group for funds - particularly because his district boundaries had been changed since he took office. Huizar's district stretches from Boyle Heights to Mid-Wilshire and also includes Chinatown, Koreatown and the Pico-Union area.
"I feel very confident and comfortable with the way we have gone about fundraising," Huizar said. "I was going to run a campaign regardless of whether I had an opponent or not. I needed to communicate with my new district…. [I wanted] to introduce myself and say: 'Here I am, your new board member; hold me accountable.' "
John Shallman, Huizar's campaign manager, said the board president prepared a "vigorous campaign" because of redistricting but also because previous board members had been targeted for defeat.
Shallman, who also manages former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg's campaign for mayor, said he saw no problem in Huizar's support from the building industry. The Los Angeles Unified School District has launched a $14-billion school construction program to relieve overcrowding.
"I don't think it's inappropriate at all for an industry that sees building schools as a good thing to support a guy who agrees with them," he said.
Campaign rules for the school district's seven board positions fall under state law, and as a result, there are no limits on the amount of money that candidates can raise. Nor are there rules about the types of companies that can give money to school board candidates.
In some instances, state law allows candidates to transfer money from one election account to another. The Los Angeles Ethics Commission says it has never issued a formal judgment on whether money from a school board race could be transferred to city races, which have strict finance rules.
Huizar, 35, has said that he has been approached in recent months by supporters asking him about his next political move. But Shallman said Huizar "does not want to be perceived as someone who wants to bank money for future runs."
When Huizar took over the presidency of the school board in 2003, he was seen as a consensus candidate between two competing factions. United Teachers Los Angeles and the Coalition for Kids, a campaign committee backed by then-Mayor Richard Riordan and billionaire Eli Broad, had spent millions of dollars in the previous two elections trying to win support for their handpicked candidates.
Huizar has received backing from both factions. Though the Coalition for Kids is no longer active, Broad gave Huizar $5,000 in 2004.
The teachers union has a history of supporting candidates who share its philosophy on how to reform education - and who vote accordingly, said UTLA President John Perez. The union endorsed Huizar in this and his previous campaign.
When the union pledged $25,000 to Huizar for a November fundraiser, it chose the sum because the board president had opposition, Perez said. But after that opponent - Manuel Aldana Jr. - withdrew, the teachers union decided to honor its promise.
"In politics, as in real life, your word is your bond," Perez said. When Aldana dropped out, he said, "we felt morally obligated to do what we said we were going to do. We made a commitment…. We're [Huizar's] biggest contributor because there happened to be an opponent at the time. If he had had no opponent, we wouldn't have made the contribution."
The two other school board members running for reelection March 8 - Marlene Canter and Julie Korenstein - stopped raising money after they realized that they were unopposed, though each received some contributions late in the year. Shallman is running both campaigns.
Canter, who funded much of her last campaign with personal money, raised about $75,000 in 2004. Korenstein raised about $85,000 last year, mostly from individual contributions and unions.
"It's very nice not having to go out there and beg for money," said Korenstein, who is routinely backed by the teachers union.
Huizar's decision not to cancel fundraisers after he became the sole candidate is troubling, said Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies.
"Why would anybody in the world want to give money to a candidate who is unopposed?" he said. "It's not a campaign contribution. It's a government access payment."
An analysis of city Ethics Commission reports shows that Huizar received at least $114,000 from architects, engineers, construction companies and others involved in the building trades. Many of those donors were frequent political contributors, but others were making their first forays into campaign financing.
The contributions ranged from $10,000 from Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliott - a law firm that has helped the district negotiate eminent-domain issues for its school building program - to $100 from JCE Structural Engineering Group, which is working on a number of school projects.
Nadel Architects, which holds a $4.6-million contract with the district and is designing two schools in Huizar's district, gave $4,500. "We contribute like most other firms in the city here," said Gregory Serrao, a Nadel executive vice president. "Jose is the president of the school board. And he's a pretty important person."
Steve Pellegren, vice president of Bernards Bros., said that his construction firm typically did not donate to political candidates and that it did not make its $5,000 donation to Huizar to curry favor. Bernards Bros. has $86.2 million in district contracts to build schools in South Gate and North Hollywood; it put up a Van Nuys middle school that opened last fall.
Pellegren said he believed that board members were detached from awarding contracts and that they had "zero influence" over the management of building projects.
After the school board approves a specific building project, it is left up to the district's facilities division to administer the contract bidding process. District guidelines call for contracts to be awarded to the lowest qualified bidder. But after contracts are signed by the facilities chief, they eventually are ratified by the board.
School board members are briefed regularly by the facilities division on the status of building projects in their districts.
About $43,000 of Huizar's political contributions last year came from construction firms that did not have contracts with the district. And it is those companies, Stern and other critics say, that have the most to gain from their donations to the school board president, even when his reelection is a lock.
"It's completely a business decision," Stern said. "It gains them access and favor, and ultimately a contract."
Shallman said Huizar's donations slowed after the first of the year. In the first three weeks of January - the last dates for which records are available - the board president collected $1,500 from the Southern California Pipe Trades union.
But, Shallman said, money is still trickling in. "There's nothing more gratifying," he said, "than for Jose to walk into a school and have a teacher or parent give him a $25 check."
3:06 PM
Who was the rival bidder?
Meruelo
A Riordan or Villaraiogsa friend?
3:36 Gracias for that compliment. Parke trains me on Saturday and Sundays. I take notes, taping, hypnotizing sessions, and harmonica lessons.
We read Icelandic Sagas together and memorize them verse by verse.
He teaches many colleagues dance.
Any other questions about Parke the teacher?
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