You take lethargic leadership, add uninspired vision, mix with low key personality, and throw in a couple city hall ethics scandals. Then, you stir with an election. What do you get: a mayor on the verge of losing his job.
I’m talking about Los Angeles and incumbent Jim Hahn. Today is election day in Tinseltown. I’m watching with real and self-interest since I’m advising Bob Hertzberg, a top challenger and former California Assembly speaker.
The major difference between LA and San Jose politics is the competition. In addition to Hertzberg, two city councilmembers and a state senator are challenging Hahn. In San Jose, incumbents don’t get challenged. They leave office when they retire or when a grand jury convenes – whichever comes first.
Mercury News reporter Laura Kurtzman captured the feel of the LA election in yesterday’s paper. Hahn is a faint twinkle in a city of bright stars. I’ve seen Hahn campaign and he’d have trouble keeping people awake at the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company even if they were giving away cappuccinos.
Hertzberg, on the other hand, talks and acts like a guy who takes his caffeine intravenously. He doesn’t drink coffee, but he has boundless energy and real enthusiasm for setting big goals. That’s exactly what LA needs. That’s why we put him on TV as a giant walking around the city proposing big solutions. Now, they’re calling him “Bobzilla.”
It’s a three way race: Hahn, Hertzberg, and city councilman Antonio Villaraigosa – who, if elected, will easily become the most visible Latino leader in the state and a national figure.
In his own tracking poll, Hahn is stuck in third place. The incumbent mayor may not make the run-off election. That hasn’t happened in three decades in LA and has never happened in San Jose. LA will then choose between Bobzilla and a rising Latino star. Maybe competition isn’t such a bad thing.
Jude,
Did you really need to remind all of us that here in SJ we are permanently stuck with a collection of Hahn clones to choose from for mayor?
This next batch of candidates is the most sleep-inducing in recent memory. I predict the lowest voter turnout (%) for a mayoral election in SJ history. Chavez, Reed, and particularly Dando (zzzzzzzzzzzzzz) would need a fire alarm at Willow Glen Coffee.
Don’t waste your time / vote on other. Goodbye Chavez and Dando. My comp is Cortese.
Nice. Hertzberg has his share of past marital problems just like our current mayor and is equally uninspiring. Should be a real sleeper.
MORE LOSERS.
LA and San Jose have the same problem, current leadership with a lack of ethical behavior and no charisma. LA has always had this situation. Even during the LA Mayor Tom Bradley years, ethical lapses were weekly occurrances. For San Jose, ethical blindness is a relatively new phenomena. Ronzales in running out of time to make our city Chicago West.
BART comes Downtown. Oakland, Murder Capital of the USA.
Hertzberg didn’t make the run-off. He’s out as he should be.
I was right again. Yahoo, the Capitol of San Jose.
Hey Jude (catchy),
You were right about Villairagos, you were wrong about Hertzburg making it. But you were right about Hahn being in trouble and losing.
2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Lousy leaders eventually gets canned. Some people here need to learn from LA.
Mayors in this town get away with ineptness, corruptness and lousiness unfortunately because nobody cares. They just live their lives – they drive their Suburbans to the mall and take their kids to soccer practice and what happens down at City Hall doesn’t seem to matter to them. That is what is sad!
I’ve been reading this website and replies to the topics for a while. The common thread I have seen so far (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) is that the City Councilmembers and Mayors in San Jo’ over the years are all incompetent/lame/uninspiring, and that citizens here do not care to do anything about it.
As a former resident of Sunnyvale, and originally from New Jersey, let me ask this question: what would have to happen to get you involved and no longer be apathetic? If you don’t want to vote to fix San Jose’s leadership, what would get you to the polls to vote? What (if anything) is preventing you from speaking out?