Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-2019 is young – still in the top of the first inning, if you will – yet LA City Hall has already had more than its fair share of awkward moments.
While Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti continues his feminized dance with the local media about “will he, won’t he” run for president, I will go on record and say not only that he cannot run, but he will not run.
That doesn’t mean Garcetti will suddenly be in LA doing his job 5 days a week. He has long since lost interest in being here and doing the job, much like a child with last year’s birthday gifts. He now desperately seeks relevance after 17 years in office at LA City Hall (and nowhere else) and needs a raison d'être to run for President in a growing field of candidates more accomplished and better known than he. (In a recent CNN poll of potential presidential candidates, Garcetti literally got an asterisk, meaning he didn’t even show up on the public’s radar.) What he actually seeks these days is to hitch a ride on the coattails of a candidate, any candidate, whose name recognition is north of zero.
But what keeps Garcetti and his chief of staff Ana Guerrero up and worried in the middle of the night?
Is it LA’s worst in the nation homelessness? Is it LA’s filthy, un-guarded subway system? Is it his failed embrace of traffic congestion pricing and road diets? Is it his inability to explain doctored animal pound kill stats that prove LA is not “No Kill?” Is he at least up at night worried about terrorism?
No, actually, what keeps Garcetti and Guerrero up in the middle of the night, sad to say, is this column.
Guerrero, who is fond of telling people (who in-turn tell me) that “nobody in the Mayor’s office read’s Dan’s column,” according to my own portfolio content analytics, was up at 1 a.m. the other day clicking through my content. I won’t tell you what she was reading, but can tell you that a half hour later, the Mayor himself – Eric Garcetti – was reading the very same content at 1:30 a.m., or later, if he was in a different time zone, pursuing relevancy.
Don’t believe it? Click here:
Awkward!
Garcetti and Guerrero know two other storylines that I am actively pursuing, while nationally known political and business figures are throwing their hats in the 2020 POTUS ring, getting media attention and already raising campaign funds. They know that other shoes should soon drop, and he cannot make a move until that happens. By then, it’ll be too late for him to run, thus it is a search for a consolation prize like DNC convention speaking time.
So the bottom line is this: if the Mayor of the America’s second largest city, an aspiring presidential candidate, Cabinet appointee, et al, reads and is worried about THIS column at 1:30 a.m., he ain’t going nowhere.
By the by, Garcetti is also believed to have tested the waters to see whether any seasoned, nationally known campaign managers would join his wished-for POTUS campaign team, to no avail as far as I have heard. The list of available campaign gurus gets smaller by the week as more of them sign onto legitimate campaigns whose candidates are not up at 1:30 a.m. reading this column.
Speaking of awkward, did you see the LA City Council introduction the other day of Garcetti’s lay-about Commission on the Status of Women, introduced by Councilmember Nury Martinez? The awkward moments came as Martinez introduced a Department GM using the wrong name. Then, when that person introduced the Commission’s newest member, Francesca Vega, every other Councilmember looked not toward the guests of honor, but for Jose Huizar to see whether and how he responded to the moment. (Vega was appointed to replace Huizar’s wife, Richelle Rios Huizar after myriad sexual harassment lawsuits against Mr. Huizar and the FBI raid of his City Hall offices and the home in which the Huizars reside with their children.)
Speaking of Nury Martinez, her office has ignored so many complaints about trash piles by the homeless throughout her District that the locals cleaned up some of the soaked, putrid piles, including used syringes, themselves.
And then there’s my own encounter last week with City Council president Herb Wesson. In my most recent column on him, Venice street performer and LA guru of political activism, David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg, alleges that Wesson defrauded the city’s health insurance and life insurance carriers by falsely claiming that he is a non-smoker.
So where is it best to ask about Herb’s habit? Right out behind City Hall, where he was found reliably puffing away, only to ditch his ciggie and dash indoors as I approached to ask whether he denies the allegation. That’s not the type of thing a politician would admit. But unless you believe that Zuma Dogg, years removed from full-time political activism, randomly made up the allegation, despite being able to tie it to a specific event, those presently investigating City Hall should subpoena the records that will set the record straight. After all, it’s only fraud, and a powerful politician denies it.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Join his mailing list or offer verifiable tips and story ideas at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
