Pick an Issue, Then a Candidate
They’re doing it again. They’re interrupting our busy lives with another election, and most of us don’t know one guy from another.
How are we supposed to vote intelligently in a city where the choice of a gym generates more consideration than the choice of a mayor?
My friend Lou Dennig has the whole thing figured out. You pick one issue that really matters to you, and his is traffic.
Dennig’s commute between Woodland Hills and Hollywood, where he punches the clock as a TV producer, is taking years off his life, and, more important, it’s cutting into his cocktail hour.
So Dennig is voting for “the really tall guy who steps on TVs and buildings -- Hertzberger or something like that. My 45-minute commute this morning was 75 minutes, so Hahn is history. If you think the third guy has a better chance, let me know, because I am voting for change.”
For political dilettantes, Hertzberger is Bob Hertzberg, who resembles a towering SpongeBob SquarePants in his TV commercials. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Huggy Bob’s gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Cripes, the guy’s been married three times.)
Hahn is Mayor Jim Hahn. And “the third guy” is Antonio Villaraigosa.
(City Hall, by the way, is the tall white building in downtown L.A.)
It’s not clear whether Hertzberg’s so-called “Commuter’s Bill of Rights” will get Dennig through traffic any faster, and Dennig is smart enough to know that.
“I want a plan,” he says. “I really don’t care whether the plan is practical or bogus.”
Dennig’s single-issue voting system is a time-saver, and let’s be honest, nobody in L.A. is going to take the time to actually compare the candidates on all the issues. Their differences aren’t substantial enough to fill a pothole anyway.
The major candidates are all Democrats, though it’s sometimes hard to tell with SpongeBob Hertzberg, who’ll hug anyone.
No matter who wins, we’re going to have cops on every corner -- roughly 500,000 new cops altogether, if you add up all the promises. And it isn’t going to cost us a nickel.
All the candidates are taking a courageous stand against corruption, but they are flush with cash from players who will line up at City Hall the day after the election and walk away with everything that isn’t bolted down.
And all the major candidates are producing TV ads and mailers accusing foes of everything but war crimes and short-sheeting.
If your single issue is that you want to be left alone, you should vote for four more years of Hahn. He skips MTA meetings as often as possible, avoids the attention that comes with sweeping reform and never makes you drop what you’re doing when he delivers a speech.
For those who’ve forgotten, Hahn won last time by convincing South L.A. that he was down with the black man, and by making white people fear that Villaraigosa would run a Mexican drug cartel out of City Hall.
Other than that, I think Hahn is a decent man and devoted father, and if your one big issue is family values, vote for anyone but him. That way Slim Jim can go home to San Pedro to be with his children, who need him more than we do.
We do run the risk, as some of you know, of having to vote for mayor twice in two months. I know, I know. Some of you would rather lose your house in a mudslide. But if no candidate gets a majority Tuesday, we’ll have to do it all again in May with the two top finishers.
A few weeks ago, when Hertzberg and I went to Art’s Deli in Studio City for salami and eggs, we talked about the possibility of a runoff between him and Villaraigosa.
“You’d really love that, wouldn’t you?” he asked.
Well, they’d certainly spice things up a bit. Both men have a detectable pulse.
Hertzberg is a 90-mile-an-hour wonk, an idea guy with a goofball sense of humor.
Villaraigosa is a Clinton-esque charmer and schemer, still stung by the job Hahn did on him last time, and poised to be the first Latino mayor in the city’s modern history.
“Hey, man, watch me,” Villaraigosa said while I was writing this column, calling me from his bus on a 32-hour tour of the city. “You watch me. I’m going to do this.”
We’ll see.
Hertzberg and Villaraigosa are former roommates who don’t get along that well after a couple of spats involving, let’s just say, the id and the ego.
So there could be fireworks if the two of them square off, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may drop by to make it a three-ring circus. Arnold and SpongeBob are pals. But there’s no telling whether the slumping governor, whose popularity is no longer on steroids, would help Hertzberg or bury him.
Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Don’t get lost in the weeds of political analysis; you might miss your yoga class. The whole point is to keep it simple, like Lou Dennig says. Pick an issue and join the spread of democracy.
If enough of us tear ourselves away from Starbucks and Pilates on election day, there’s an outside chance we can match the Iraqis.
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Steve Lopez writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.
