NEWS ANALYSIS: What Lies Behind The Issues in L.A.'s Most Closely-Watched Election Campaign

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Tuesday night’s Candidates Forum between and Rudy Martinez, the Eagle Rock businessman trying to unseat him from the City Council, was the pledge that both candidates took to avoid personal attacks on each other during the 27 days left for the March 8 election and to focus instead on solutions to community problems.

Not many people in the audience at the , where the event was held, may have been aware, however, that even though the promise may have been heartfelt—the two rivals gave each other a bear hug before the event began—it wasn’t exactly spontaneous. In fact, the question that prompted it—“We would like to ask each candidate to publicly pledge, from now and for the remainder of their campaigns, to focus on community issues and solutions rather than personal attacks. Do you both agree?”—had been e-mailed to the campaign staff of both candidates well before their public appearance. As Huizar’s campaign manager Parke Skelton put it to Eagle Rock Patch: “It was not a surprise—we look forward to joining Mr. Martinez in a positive and enlightening examination of the community’s issues.”

Just this morning, in an e-mail sent out to his supporters and to the media, Martinez called for an end to the “character assassination campaign being run by my opponent” (conspicuously leaving himself out of the equation). He said he had sent Huizar an “agreement”—a “clean campaign pledge” that he hopes his opponent will sign—in which personal attacks are defined as “any campaign communication” that contains anything about the other candidate’s immediate or extended family, personal life, personal integrity, or which either “uses words or images that imply violent threats” or raises “lawsuits and business disputes not related to public policy issues.”

Judging by almost all the comments that Tuesday night's debate inspired on this site, it seems as though Huizar has a clear edge over Martinez regarding community issues, although the actual substance behind that advantage may be far from obvious, as we at Eagle Rock Patch hope to demonstrate.

“The debate last night clinched it for me,” wrote one our readers, Darren. “Huizar clearly has a much better grasp of city politics.” One measure that Huizar evidently has a better handle on local politics was Martinez’s apparent ignorance of “Measure L,” a ballot initiative on March 8 that seeks to regularly finance L.A.’s public library system, which has faced a series of crippling cutbacks over the past couple of years.

Of particular concern to some was Martinez’s suggestion that library resources and services can be revitalized and expanded by the community’s volunteer efforts. “For someone who professes concern for getting people back to work, you’d think he’d understand that professional librarians (who, by the way, have a Masters degree in librarianship) with access to subscription-based content can do a lot for the local economy by helping people find jobs and start businesses,” wrote Darren.

“Personally, I worry about how much responsibility (blame) Martinez is already trying to assign to his potential constituents,” remarked another reader, Mark. “I cringe every time he mentions us needing to volunteer—obviously we could/should all do more to help out and involve ourselves in the community, but we're not the ones running for office.”

Adds Mark: “At this point in the discourse we should really be focused on what he can do for us. Perhaps he could discuss how he will draw us all into the community by organizing events and such. I mean look at how successful that whole clean up the Yosemite Rec Center Park event was. Who organized that?” (The short answer: The , with the support of Huizar’s City Council staff.)

Martinez also got some flack—and can expect a lot more in the days to come—for his desire to crack down on what he calls “vendors.” The existence of these people, also called street hawkers, “cheapens our quality of life, it lowers property values, and I will stop that immediately,” Martinez said at the forum. More liberal-minded constituents might find it disquieting that the elimination of “vendors” is one of Martinez’s three stated goals if elected to office—along with, and presumably linked to, job creation and public safety. As Darren put it: “I also found his continual emphasis on the ‘vendors’ whom he described as a blight on the neighborhood rather odd. I really have no idea what he is talking about here, so I can only guess this was a straw man he’s created.”

Those unfamiliar with this particular peeve of Martinez’s need to remember that he is the owner of a prominent Eagle Rock restaurant, Mia Sushi, as well as in Highland Park. It’s therefore understandable that as a businessman Martinez would oppose as unscrupulous and unacceptable the unlicensed sale of everything from tacos to knock-off T-shirts on streets. Even licensed food trucks, as Martinez has said in other public forums previously, take away business from brick-and-mortar restaurants, especially because they tend to ignore the one-hour limit on parking and selling their goods in a neighborhood.

Still, you have to wonder why Martinez would be so unsympathetic to “vendors” when there seems to be a demonstrable link between their proliferation and the city’s stifling bureaucracy. After all, as Martinez himself pointed out in the context of the first of his three goals—job creation: “The red tape in this city is appalling.”

Further, to use the word “blight” to refer to so-called vendors betrays a sense of acquired elitism in a man who otherwise likes to remind us of his humble beginnings in a large family of 10 children in Echo Park. And let’s not forget that “these days, the word ‘blight’ immediately conjures up images of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles,” as the political commentator and one-time aspirant to the City Council Tony Butka wrote in his blog about Tuesday’s debate. They agency, he pointed out, recently received a $2.5 million Housing and Urban Development grant “to explore the idea of gobbling up large portions of Northeast Los Angeles … by declaring blight and thus allowing them to give us the blessings of eminent domain.” Added Butka: “Just ask Atwater Village and the folks at the Adelante Eastside Project of the CRA in Boyle Heights.”

Further, the fact that both Martinez and Huizar do not send their children to public schools must have lowered their image in the minds of many constituents. (Martinez said at the forum that his son has special needs and that he therefore sends him to a private school in Pasadena; Huizar, citing personal and religious reasons, said he sends his kids to Catholic school.)

“Both candidates' admission that their children don’t attend LAUSD schools was disappointing,” wrote Darren. “Certainly one can respect the decision to send one’s children to a private school, but neither really took up the mantle of underscoring the need to raise public school performance so that more families would be engaged in this critically important civic institution.”

On the vital civic and environmental issue of alternate transportation, “Martinez wants us to get out there and bike and walk more,” said Darren, adding: “Well, me too (and I do)! The difference is, Huizar seems to recognize that improved infrastructure is crucial.”

On the whole, the Feb. 8 forum was “a pretty safe appearance for the incumbent and probably was productive for Huizar,” says one Eagle Rock resident who does not wish to identify himself other than to disclose that he is a practicing attorney and longtime observer of L.A.’s political scene. Here, in the interests of informing our readers and broadening the discussion about CD 14 politics, are some of the things that our source heard on Tuesday night—issues that, he believes, might be a turn-off to some voters:

• “Rudy's got a theme of “We have to help ourselves and not count on the city for everything.” This just seems to me to scare some voters who have become accustomed to city services. It's a good message but needs some careful language to present it and some better development of the idea—maybe some ‘compare and contrast’ or ‘benefits vs. the burdens’ analysis of some sort.

• “José continues to take credit for the ‘services’ to CD 14. Any councilmember in his spot would have that as a defaulted task that comes with the job. The extraordinary ‘gains’ are negated by a lot of José’s other actions not mentioned [Tuesday] night: The money in discretionary funds and ‘campaign funds’ that José was quick to correct Rudy about after Rudy mentioned he would be accountable for ‘every penny spent in the district.’

• “The Eagle Rock Music Festival is a high-profile item that gives José good mileage and he used it again as one of his ‘accomplishments’ for business. The thirty-some grand of tax money that José uses for [what is essentially his] self-promotion is not part of the discussion. As [the political commentator] Kevin James said about funding this past year's music festival: “The posters should say, ‘The taxpayers of L.A. and the Center for the Arts present the Eagle Rock Music Festival,’ and not ‘José Huizar presents ...’  Those are tax dollars that are spent. All that fell on deaf ears for the most part. Nothing is said of the effect on some businesses that may not be benefiting from the crowds. But people who have a good time really don't bother with any of the details—and you can apply that to the football stadium deal ongoing that has our city leaders and the Mayor [Antonio Villaraigosa] selling out to Liewicke and AEG for some legacy claim that their egos crave.

• “Some city policies don’t make sense as a ‘positive’ but reflect the desperation for cash that is crucial, now that bad city management has worked its way to near-bankrupt conditions. The city used to fix sidewalks as public property and now there’s the 50 percent cost tacked on as a property lien for repairs not done wholly by the property owner. The councilmember was part of the pack that brought us hikes—huge ones in parking meters and a lot of smaller one in things like parking tickets that went up $5 for the simple purpose of raising money to make up for the budget deficits—and ‘because they can.’

• “Example: Trash collection and recycling are not clear-cut value-for-payment at all. The tripling of fees replaced the three-year step increases because the Mayor wanted a feather in his cap to run for governor.

• “Rudy, who has no access to any city funds, as an office holder already does, can only speculate on what can be done with the money. He can state his intentions—and they don't have the weight of what's actually provided, no matter how fiscally wise or essential to the city or district. José used median strip improvements and milked this for all he could [Tuesday] night. Rudy compared Glendale medians to Eagle Rock: I think that was not good since there's always turf pride in Eagle Rock, even if Glendale does things more elaborately. And we do have lots of succulents in pots installed on Eagle Rock Boulevard. That is an improvement and was a community effort—maybe Rudy did not know and maybe succulents in pots are not his favorite plant choice, but it was an improvement. To discredit all current median conditions really is not community-building and may have cost [Rudy] some votes.

• “The blanket indictment of massage parlors, implying criminal activity at all of them, is not fair if there is no proof as to all of them. That probably did not cost [Rudy] votes but it did not leave the possibility of legitimate businesses existing among them either.

• “Rudy needs to be specific on more things. The tone of his statements has a lot of passion but there’s not much about just what will be done or how it will happen. The demand for police to do more enforcement work has to be tempered with the fiscal reality of ‘no-money’ available. What he should be looking at is why is there no money. That’s in part due to the City’s continued practice of giving in to special interests, including unions and making grand benefits with not a bit of future projections for impact. The financial bungling of councilmembers, while bleeding money in myriad other ways (usually to get votes that will maintain job security) does not have the city businesses and residents interests at heart.

• “José is a part of the current trend, the downhill trend, at City Hall. They became an employment agency in 2009 for around nine months, transferring city employees in the face of a call for budget cuts, i.e., layoffs. The private sector for years was cutting jobs but city slowness to do what needed to be done just magnified the task when they actually did get around to it.

• “José was part of the Library closure decision. Prop. L. is to be the beneficiary of that political stunt. The council could open libraries as soon as they could muster a vote. (But the funding allocations were up to them all along and they decided to hit the libraries.) This will be a high-profile pain for the public that will make Prop L. look like a lifesaver. “All Prop. L. will do will be to mandate a fixed amount to go to library funding—but from within the pool of money that they have. A corresponding sum of money will be taken from other places in the budget—a shifting of money, not an increase in revenues. On top of that, the libraries will be made a ‘stand alone’ to bear all their own costs of operation, which will leave them with a deficit of several million when the dust settles. Currently, the General Fund, I believe, is what pays the library system operations. I don't know where the book acquisition part fits in, but whether a library is opened or closes is the main question.

• “In the end, you have a nanny-state Council that spent time and money on too many things that should have been slimmed down over many years instead of stalling for years to arrive at a crisis-level condition that requires making moves not simply important but ‘critical.’ It didn't have to be that way. But you will see worse unless City Hall changes its ways—or a change in City Hall happens."