Summary: about every eight years, Los Angeles, and the Southern California region which is its economic hinterland, gets itself into a swivet over who will be the next mayor of the so-called City of Angels. Time was, that El Pueblo Real de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Río Porciuncula was a small, partly Midwestern, partly Latino city whose politics merited scant discussion even in Sacramento. Those days came to a screeching halt when World War II came to the United States. In the 80 years since America’s entry into the Pacific War, Los Angeles has outpaced the so-called Windy City as the second largest city in the United States. What Los Angeles’ Mayor says can now cause ripples all over the world. As Los Angeles prepares to replace the termed-out Eric Garcetti, voters face a choice between the Trumpian multi-zillionaire Rick Caruso and the African-American Congresswoman, and former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. Bass is by far and away the better choice for mayor of Los Angeles.
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Cathedral City, May 23, 2022 – about every eight years, the City of Los Angeles goes through the almost operatic exercise of choosing a new mayor to replace whatever incumbent has been termed out. After the late Tom Bradley served for an unprecedented 20 years from 1973 to 1993, California voters, succumbing to the blandishments of Republicans led by sometime County supervisor Pete Schabarum, adopted a rather foolish term limitation initiative that, by all accounts, was intended by Schabarum to punish Bradley for his 20 years of mayoralty in Los Angeles and Willie Brown for his similar degree of control over the speakership of the California Assembly.
In 1993, Los Angeles voters chose the white, wealthy, well-connected, Republican Richard Riordan over the Asian American Democrat Michael Wu. As a relatively new lawyer at the time, and as a Democrat, I naturally supported Wu, though, as a West Hollywood resident at the time, I could not vote for Wu. In fact, the vagaries of geography are such that my last vote for mayor of Los Angeles was an absentee vote for Tom Bradley in 1989.
I should, I suppose, be hesitant to, or not weigh in at all, on the subject of who will be the next mayor of Los Angeles. After all, I myself am technically speaking no longer an Angeleño. But, Los Angeles is still the city of my birth; it is still metaphorical 800 pound gorilla in whose economic hinterland all of us; even people in such large cities as Dallas, Houston, Denver, and St. Louis must take close account of what happens in the city through whose port, along with that of Long Beach, handles a very considerable proportion of America’s seaborne trade. In short, most of the United States west of the Mississippi, most of Canada west of Hudson’s Bay, and most of northern Mexico are within the economic hinterland of El Pueblo Real de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Río Porciuncula, that small, insignificant little Colonia of mestizo farmers planted by the Spanish crown near the Tongva settlement of Yang-na/Yaanga on September 4, 1781.
Since then, the growth of Los Angeles has been phenomenal. Indeed, in the last 25 years, since I relocated to the Coachella Valley, Los Angeles has come to occupy a larger and larger space, both economically and politically. Indeed, part of the reason, I think, why the late Greg Pettis and I were both elected to the city Council here in Cathedral City is because of our connections with Los Angeles. Greg was originally from the San Gabriel Valley east of downtown, while I spent much of my life in the Hollywood Hills or in the so-called gay Vatican of West Hollywood. Both of us were aware, both as businessmen and as councilmembers, of the importance of the city of Los Angeles to every other city in Southern California. Indeed, the seemingly outsized influence of Los Angeles itself may have called forth the creation of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), as a partial effort to offset the enormous size and influence of the City of the Angels.
Thus, my continuing involvement with the politics, operatic though they may be, of the City of Los Angeles. In 1993, when Richard Riordan and Michael Wu squared off for the mayoralty, my natural support for Wu was not simply a function of reflexively supporting the Democrat in the race. Rather, I had paid close attention to Richard Riordan and to Richard Riordan’s proclivities. Indeed, I had eaten several times at Mr. Riordan’s restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. I found Mr. Riordan to be, with 2020 hindsight to be sure, an eerie prefiguring of that other millionaire turned politician, Donald J. Trump. I found both men to be overbearing as only rich men can be. I found them to be surrounded, and willfully so, by sycophants and yes-men, by suckers up who would tell the boss what ever the boss wanted to hear. I didn’t like it from Richard Riordan in 1993, and I didn’t like it 23 years later from Donald Trump.
I have met both Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. While Richard Riordan is more polite than Donald Trump, I nevertheless consider him complicit in the rise of the billionaire politicians who seek to remake America in their own, often fascist, image. Indeed, for that reason, I’m profoundly thankful to God that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel were not born in this country, and thus are constitutionally debarred from election to the presidency.
I have the same misgivings about Rick Caruso that I had about Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. I have only met Mr. Caruso once, in passing, when he wanted something from SCAG. Our conversation was relatively brief, but it left me with an impression very similar to that which I had received from my meetings, admittedly brief ones, with Richard Riordan and Donald Trump. It was an impression that Mr. Caruso, like Richard Riordan and Donald Trump, was too much a “businessman,” rather than being a public servant. Like Riordan and Trump, Caruso impressed me as not being ready for prime time, or as a former law partner of mine put it, he is just “too twisted for color TV.”
Karen Bass, on the other hand, has everything in a public servant that appeals to me. I first met Karen Bass in 2007, when she was a member of the California Assembly from the then-47th district. I met her a few times thereafter, most notably shortly before she became speaker, in May, 2008. Karen impressed me as being someone who could listen, and as someone who could understand that the issues affecting us, here in our little City of Cathedral City, where the same issues that affected her constituents in her assembly District in south-central Los Angeles. She was concerned about things like the crack cocaine epidemic, LGBT rights, and other matters with respect to which she took her concerns to Congress when she joined that body in 2011, after being termed out of the Assembly. In both Sacramento and Washington City, Bass has developed a reputation for being a progressive bridge builder who can talk to both sides of the aisle.
That political résumé is exactly what is needed in a mayor for Los Angeles. Note, I did not say a mayor of Los Angeles, but a mayor for Los Angeles. The turned out incumbent, and would be ambassador to India (that is, assuming Chuck Grassley, who represents fewer people that live in the city of Los Angeles, can be induced to stop meddling) Eric Garcetti, has been an effective mayor. But, Los Angeles is ready for the kind of leadership that can only come from a bridge building, progressive, woman of color.
Karen Bass is the right person at the right time to be a mayor for Los Angeles. As an Angeleño by birth, and as a member of the political nation in Southern California, I have no hesitation at all endorsing Karen Bass to be mayor for Los Angeles.
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Paul S. Marchand, Esq. is an attorney lives in Cathedral City and practices law next door in the Republican retirement redoubt of Rancho Mirage. He was born in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley when it still shared the 213 area code with the rest of the city. Mr. Marchand has been practicing law in California for just shy of 32 years. He is a registered member of the Democratic Party, and a former member of the Cathedral City city Council, as well as having been a member of the Riverside County Democratic Central Committee and a founding member of Desert Stonewall Democrats. He is not a member of the Republican tribe.
