Hahn Loses: Nervous City Awaits Villaraigosa's Reign*
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UPDATES, REAX BELOW Good morning. L.A.'s long urban nightmare is over. Time to take stock.
Overview: What matters most is not so much that Antonio Villaraigosa won, it's that Mayor Jim Hahn - one of the most ineffectual, invisible chief executives this good city has ever endured - got his empty head handed to him.
A thirty-percent turnout is hardly a mandate, however. Villaraigosa should hear the clear message that - rather than embracing and empowering him to lead it into the future - Los Angeles roused itself long enough to allow as how it sorta prefers him and would rather have him in charge for the next four years. And that we'll be watching him nervously in hopes that this isn't just another stepping-stone office for a seasoned political carpetbagger en route to Congress or a showdown with Das Governator.
That said, the councilman's elevation to mayor is a better thing than Hahn's continued reign would have been, for a number of reasons. Most of them boil down to the effect and promise that fresh blood brings ...
He's got (part of) the will of (some of) the people at his back. He's got the power to kick out every one of the most impotent, bungling department heads in City Hall (and they are legion, according to the few sources I have). And he's got experience in shudder Sacramento, which at least qualifies him to navigate the shifting currents in the City Council chambers and the city's rich, complex and needy neighborhoods whom Hahn left starving for leadership.
Put aside, for a second, the past. Villaraigosa's flaws have been amply detailed by L.A.'s journalists and columnists, not to mention Hahn's campaign flacks and the unhired guns of the blogerati. His questionable Floridian supporters were wrung out and hung out like incriminating underthings found by a cuckold.
His absentee custodianship of CD 14 left his constituents bitter and pissed and not noticeably better off than they would have been had Nick Pacheco hung onto the office. His service as John Kerry's campaign aide in the November election made himself, not Kerry look good on a national level and did nothing for the city.
No, what's more important now is for all of us to focus on the task at hand - welcoming him to office and holding him to his word - that he will make Los Angeles a better place to live and do business.
Keep in mind that while I'm cynical as the next armchair pundit, I'm also L.A.'s most naive optimist. I like to think that given a new plaything so shiny and wonderful as a sprawling, vital city - the creative capital of the planet, I might add - any politician worth his salt would immediately set about fixing what's broke, building new opportunities and projecting a realistic plan to guide it steadily into the uncertain future.
Of course, I also believe that Congress will push industry toward clean energy before the earth chokes to death, that when Bush leaves office someone smarter will be elected and that when they finally arrive, the space aliens will be our friends.
Look, if Antonio Villaraigosa accomplishes even half of the pie-in-the-sky goals laid out in his Vision for Los Angeles, we'll all be rolling in cheap housing, new investment dollars, fast freeway lanes, clean air and jobs, jobs, jobs. Did I mention the space alien thing?
Final word to Jim Hahn: I don't hate you. I don't hate your ideals. I don't begrudge you the sh!tty stunts you pulled in trying to get re-elected, since anybody who had blown such an opportunity as the mayoralty of a world-class metropolis so badly as you would also have done absolutely anything, including character assassination, race-baiting and outright lying to stay in office. But I hate the job you did. You let us all down.
Now go away. Back to San Pedro, down out of sight to whatever consulting job awaits. And don't let the screen door etc., etc..
Final word to Antonio Villaraigosa: DON'T ... F*CK ... UP.
And the LATimes blog (for all my bitching last night) managed to provide a nice, if somewhat dry and prim array of voices on the Villaraigosa win/Hahn loss. Memo to the cruel bastard in charge of the CSS over there - it's bad enough to use a tiny font. Making it gray is eye-punishingly cruel.
More news noise as it develops.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - 05:29 AM
