LA’S POLITICAL GLASS CEILING - Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the country and arguably its most diverse.
We have beaches and mountains. The superrich and the desperately poor. Beautiful people from all over the planet trying to make it in Hollywood and ugly people here to take 10 percent from them. You name it, we have it.
Except for women on the Los Angeles City Council.
All signs point to a May 21 city election where all 15 of the LA City Council's seats could be filled by men. Who would have thought the only person with binders full of women in Los Angeles would be Heidi Fleiss?
To add insult to injury for Angelino women, the one-time favorite for mayor, City Controller Wendy Greuel, was trailing Councilman Eric Garcetti by 10 points in a Los Angeles Times/USC poll taken just a few weeks ago (though she's since pulled even).
The only other elected positions in the City of Angels are controller and city attorney. Both of these contests feature man-vs.-man matchups. For controller, it will be longtime Valley councilman Dennis Zine or political neophyte Ron Galperin. The contest for city attorney will feature the incumbent, Carmen Trutanich, against assemblyman and former councilman Mike Feuer.
City Hall is not only full of men, it's full of very likeminded men. Of the 15 members of the Council, only one is a registered Republican, and according to a recent study conducted by LA Weekly, in the 5,223 Council votes in 2011, members voted unanimously a whopping 97.5 percent of the time.
The Weekly did the math and found that of the 75,000 chances members of the Council had to disagree (15 elected officials multiplied by 5,233 votes), they did so only 133 times.
It gets worse. In 2010, the Center for Governmental Studies found that in the 1,854 votes in 2009, the City Council voted unanimously 99.3 percent of the time.
For a liberal city that endlessly congratulates itself on its rich diversity, the numbers tell a different story. In reality, this council displays all the diversity of the Augusta National Golf Club. (Read the rest … including more discussion on why women are disappearing from LA’s City Hall … here)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 41
Pub: May 21, 2013
