What are the rest of the mayoral candidates up to? One more time, in the service of fairness, here's the latest on the candidates who are - if past patterns hold true - not likely to make it past the primaries ...
Bill Wyatt: The T-shirt entrepreneur, who prides himself on not accepting donations, has decided that if the big guns can buy votes with expensive media campaigns, he can buy votes the old fashioned way: with cash. Wyatt's putting up cash prizes in a weekly contest called Get Paid to Play for what he deems the best ideas for improving Los Angeles:
Any idea can win, but I'm looking for things that will either save the city money, help LA run more efficiently or just make LA a better place to live. The winner gets fifty-bucks. On each Monday I will review the ideas and post a poll to help decide the winner, although I will reserve the mayoral authority to choose another idea from the submittals other than the top vote-getter, with justification. I will add the suggestion to my campaign and give full credit to the originator of the winning idea.Â
Wyatt's blog also points to a section of his online forums that offers what he says are unvarnished opinions about his opponents, and invites anyone to comment.
Wendy Lyons: The meatpacker and Socialist Workers Party candidate pops up most recently in Google results on Dec. 21, offering New Year's greetings to the L.A.'s Chinese-American community. Says the squib at TheMilitant.com,
After outlining key demands in the SWP campaign platform—championing, in particular, the struggle of working people to organize unions and to strengthen them where they exist to resist the bosses’ attacks —Lyons explained the socialists’ opposition to Washington’s anti-China campaign.
“We call for an end to threats against China, from U.S. naval maneuvers in the Pacific, to the arming of Taiwan, to Washington’s aggressive trade policies. We are for Washington dropping all tariffs and restrictions on goods coming in from China and the whole semicolonial world,” she said.
Addie Mae Miller: The senior citizens' advocate doesn't seem to be campaigning in any active fashion that's been picked up by local media, or reflected on her Web site.
Bruce Harry Darian: Every single page of the businessman's web site lists is devoted to a localized version of the Federalist party platform, which generally holds that:
the ports of L.A. and the nation are woefully underprotected from terrorism: pollution threatens us all and carpooling is inadequate to the task of mitigation (better we should all ride in 27-seat commuter vans);
prison labor can help repair our infrastructure;
a WPA-style mural project could beautify the city;
homeless people deserve food, clothing and shelter;
gang members must be treated as domestic terrorists;
The city needs a job training program to offset the outsourcing of L.A. jobs;
City contracts and even change-orders should be open to at least 7 bids each; and
illegal immigrants should get neither drivers' licenses nor special treatment.
Martin Luther King Aubrey Sr.,: The state worker (who ran in 2001 too) has no web site, and doesn't show up in Google beyond his listing as a candidate.
Ted Crisell: Qualified to run, the publisher is completely MIA.
Any of the candidates - including the media-anointed - are welcome to augment this report with comments below. So is anyone else, for that matter.
Posted by: mack_reed on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:30 PM
