Election Day Tomorrow

Can Brad Smith stop Englander & the big money interests behind him?

If you live in L.A. there's some kind of small chance you may be voting tomorrow. I am. And I even wrote about the City Council race in my district over the weekend. There are 10 ballot measures and a whole slew of local races.

Measures G through Q are basically all good government reform measures and I'm voting YES on everything. The most important ones look like H, which would ring a bit more corruption out of city government by prohibiting lobbyists and anyone bidding on city contracts to donate to candidates while increasing matching funds for candidates. Normally I wouldn't care that much about Measures I and J, which seek to bring some accountability to the Department of Water and Power, but after the last 5 months of Kafkaesque nightmare trying to get my solar project going, I'd vote to have the entire department eradicated if I could. (An Office of Public Accountability-- which is what "I" creates and "J" funds-- is probably more feasible.) L helps the Public Library to stay open; it's a no-brainer.

M is for marijuana... and money. And if Measure M passes, there'll be a $50 tax on every $1,000 of pot and pot products sold at medical marijuana dispensaries, a burgeoning local business.

Even more important for many people is the Oil Severance Tax (Measure O, of course). I'm still scratching my head over Measure Q, which expands civil service exemptions for some management positions and makes me a little queasy about voting for it when I don't fully understand the implications. The local Democratic Party is against it (as is the League of Women Voters) so I'm wondering if maybe I better get busy reading more about how this would work before I vote yes.

Aside from the referendums on the 10 measures, there are also races for L.A. City Council seats (as well as for the West Hollywood City Council), LAUSD School Board seats and LACCD Community College Board seats. There are at least two seats on the L.A. City Council that need changing-- Districts 8 and 12. In the 8th, South L.A., Florescee Hogan-Rowles (the union candidate) would probably be a slightly better member than Bernard Parks. And in 12-- in suburban/exurban northwest San Fernando Valley-- Greig Smith is retiring and it looks like he-- as well as the slimy big money developer interests-- are trying to hand the seat over to his chief of staff, Mitchell Englander, a conservative Republican. Brad Smith is the best of the half dozen candidates for the only open seat on the Council.

In the 2nd district-- Studio City and most of North Hollywood-- Paul Krekorian has earned reelection and he's very popular after just serving for 2 years. And in the 4th district, which stretches from North Hollywood into Los Feliz and Silverlake and down into the Miracle Mile, incumbent Tom LaBonge is also very popular, especially in Los Feliz where he is thought to have saved Griffith Park by having advocated for the stronger water pressure that allowed fire fighters to halt the fire that could have wiped out a good part of the area. O'Grady is quietly campaigning as the conservative candidate and Box is loudly campaigning as the progressive candidate.

Over in West Hollywood I'm not as familiar with the candidates, except Abbe Land, who deserves re-election. And the LACCD Community Colleges Board are voted at-large so, regardless of where you live you vote in all the races. The best candidates-- supported by the college teachers, the local Democratic Party and environmentalists-- are Mona Field, Steve Veres, Scott Svonkin, and Miguel Santiago. At least no one running in L.A. would be anything like this:



Find your polling place here.