Not All Photo Ops Are Created Equal

So I recently picked up my April edition of Los Angeles Magazine and read Kevin Roderick's Empty Feeling, a piece which essentially mocks City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's political impotence and penchant for media attention, and argues that despite many years in office, he has yet to prove himself.

The article begins by chronicling the rise of Delgadillo in the early nineties and his work in the Riordan administration before becoming the "first Mexican American elected citywide in modern times" in 2001. Emboldened by a string of political successes, Roderick explains, "nakedly ambitious" Delgadillo began to overreach, fancying himself Senator—even President, and committed a major political blunder in announcing his candidacy for Attorney General within days of winning reelection as City Attorney.

Delgadillo proved to be a laughably ineffective statewide candidate, easy pickings for his opponent in the Democratic primary, former governor Jerry Brown. Delgadillo's campaign strategist quit early on, allowing Brown’s consultant, Ace Smith, to quip, "Rocky's campaign is pulling up to the starting gate with a car that's got a smoking engine and four flat tires." Delgadillo never became more than a cipher outside Los Angeles. Even within the city the love was lacking. The Times, the Daily News, and the L.A. Weekly did not endorse him.

At this point in the article, I'm on board with Roderick. The moral of the story is that our electeds should focus on the job we've elected them to do, right?

Not so fast.

(Continue after the jump)


Roderick's missiles are reserved for specific targets, and they don't discriminate between political performance and job performance.

The other media-hungry, nakedly ambitious, Mexican American precedent-setter (for those counting), who fancies himself Governor—even President, emerges unscathed, if not aggrandized in the same passages that tear Delgadillo down. Roderick makes the case that Rocky has yet to prove himself, and then jumps from criticizing Delgadillo's political blunders, to criticizing him for actually doing something about L.A.'s gang problem, without missing a beat.

He has hired a senior federal prosecutor, Bruce Riordan, to be his office's anti-gang czar. He has proposed a strategy for targeting gangs in schools, enhancing sentences for gang crimes committed near LAUSD campuses, requiring all students to wear uniforms, and putting prosecutors on school grounds. He also wants to see more teeth in the court injunctions that prohibit some gang activities. Fifty gangs are now covered, up from nine when Delgadillo took office. "We know it brings a sense of calm to the neighborhood," he says.

Looking tough on gangs does help Delgadillo's image. Too bad that Villaraigosa has jumped into the anti-gang wars, too. The mayor unveiled a major effort to pool the law enforcement clout of the federal government and the LAPD. Police chief William Bratton—not the city attorney—is seen as the top local gang fighter.

The problem with this analysis, of course, is that Delgadillo is not looking tough on gangs; he's getting tough on gangs. Rocky is systematically locking bad guys up—press release after press release tells me so.

Chief Bratton, on the other hand, is woefully ineffective on gangs. Rather than battle the Mayor on Special Order #40 or challenge him to hire more police officers with L.A.'s record-shattering budget, the legendary crime-fighter has opted for the path of least resistance in his pursuit of a second term.

Meanwhile, Villaraigosa is tiptoeing around the issue, honing his doublespeak, and looking for any opportunity to take his reality TV cameras on the road—the latest episode featuring a trip to El Salvador with the purported objective of convincing the Salvadorian government to keep their gang members from crossing our defenseless border and setting up shop in our sanctuary city.

Gang members laugh at Villaraigosa's unveiling of "a major effort to pool the law enforcement clout of the federal government and the LAPD" and taxpayers cry. Like everything else, this is just more carbon dioxide from the mayor, and two years into this circus, we are growing increasingly impatient for some photosynthesis.

Whatever his political blunders, Delgadillo is seen as the top local gang fighter because (aside from District Attorney Steve Cooley) he's the only person among those with the power to perform who is actually performing. Who can fault him for leveraging his work as City Attorney to advance his political career?

That ought to be the reward for a job well done, but in our rotten, incestuous sphere of local politics, the nerds secrete pheromones for the man who makes savvy political calculations and "gets away" with hubris, while Joe Taxpayer waits four more years for a return on his investment.

Roderick found a large, slow-moving political piñata in Delgadillo, beat him indiscriminately, and collected the candy. After reading his article, I assess the situation as follows: two media-hungry men were hired to do a job, and only one of them is doing it.