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| The shirt goes on the inside, Skippy. |
What did this Trujillo fellah say? Nothing new. He merely trotted out the same lame and exhausted straw man that the open borders crowd has relied on for years to try to intimidate people: he claimed I must be racist because -- like 74% of America -- I want our immigration laws enforced.
Wow. Is that really the best you've got, Skippy? "Racist?" That's it? You've had months to prepare, and that's the best you could come up with to try to divide and conquer L.A. Clean Sweep? What's your second argument? Do you even have a second argument?
Trujillo, baby, have you even read the L.A. Clean Sweep draft platform? Do you realize it doesn't address immigration law one way or another? Can you point to any plank in the L.A. Clean Sweep platform that any normal reasonable person, whether liberal or conservative, would oppose? Do you not "get" that L.A. Clean Sweep is a coalition of liberals, moderates and conservatives who, despite whatever disagreements they may have about national or international policy, have united to clean up City Hall?
Tell us, Trujillo: What is your argument in favor of Huizar, Garcetti, Hahn, Villaraigosa and all the rest giving hundreds of millions of dollars of working people's tax money to billionaire developers? What is your argument in favor of a pension plan that is swallowing the budget whole? Why should the people of L.A. accept schools so awful that anyone who can afford to send their kids to private school does so?
Nothing? You've got nothing? That's what I thought.
Having never heard of Trujillo, I started looking into his identity and past because, really, why would someone want to say such a horrible thing about a guy as delightful as yours truly?
The dots practically connected themselves.
It turns out Trujillo was a staffer for Villaraigosa for years, after which he started holding himself out as a "political consultant." Sure, why not? It's not as though one needs a license to claim he is a "political consultant." Unfortunately for Trujillo and his clients, however, he has an abysmal track record. Perhaps this is because his standard campaign approach is not to try to extoll any supposed virtues of his clients, but instead to call his clients' opponents racist, sexist or liars.
Trujillo's "strategy" has never actually worked, but he sticks with it anyway. He apparently never got Emerson's memo about a foolish consistency. Let's just hope one or more of the incumbent City Council candidates hires this genius for the March 2011 election. With enemies like this, who needs friends?
Anyhow, Trujillo is -- or at least was in 2009 -- an employee of a group called "Working Californians," which describes itself as "a non-profit strategic research and advocacy group. . . ." Guess who one of the two "Co-Chairs" of the group is? None other than Brian D'Arcy, the head of the DWP union.
See the dots connecting?
Trujillo ran the failed campaign to pass Measure B -- the solar power monopoly boondoggle. Trujillo was the one who, unwilling to defend Measure B on the merits, filed a lawsuit calling Ron Kaye and the other opponents liars. Remember? Trujillo actually tried to keep their argument off the ballot. The Judge didn't fall for Trujillo's "liars" ploy and, happily, neither did enough of the voters to pass that measure.
Trujillo, and, more importantly, his bosses, therefore know about the power of L.A.'s growing grassroots movement. That is why they're trying to stop this one. Having millions of dollars of special interest money to spend only gets them so far. On election day, it's votes, not dollars, that count.
Despite crashing and burning on Measure B, Trujillo duped City Council Member Janice Hahn into letting him run her campaign for Lieutenant Governor. The task probably seemed fool-proof, insofar as no one else wanted to run for that office at first.
When Gavin Newsom threw his hat in the ring, Trujillo's brilliant strategy was to try to portray him as sexist, because, after all, Newsom had the audacity to run against a woman. Trujillo sent out an email saying, "So he did what boy's [sic] usually do, he tried to push the woman out of the race, out of the way, out of the light."
In the words of Patrick Range McDonald of the LA Weekly, "Yep, Hahn played the gender card." Playing the "gender" card, however, worked no better than playing the "liars" card.
Unable to come up with any positive reasons for people to support his candidate, Trujillo just kept trying to tear down Newsom with one bad-faith, bogus blast after another, to the point where he annoyed the very reporters he was trying to win over.
In a story labeled, "Hahn campaign attempting to bash Newsom - again," columnist Art Marroquin noted that the San Francisco Chronicle responded to Trujillo's "allegations the same way I did, when [Trujillo] called my personal cell phone at 10:10 p.m. Tuesday to unsuccessfully pitch me this same story."
Nor was Newsom the only person whom Trujillo tried to trash for Hahn, who by now must have a severe case of buyer's remorse. Gary Pierce, an Arizona power commissioner, offered to enter into negotiations to relieve the City of L.A. of its contractual obligations to buy power and water from the state, so as to facilitate Hahn's "boycott." In other words, Pierce called Hahn's boycott bluff. Trujillo promptly opened his one-page play-book and called the commissioner -- you guessed it -- "racist." Even worse, Trujillo, having failed to learn from Ben Stiller's troubles, even likened the commissioner to a mentally retarded movie character. Ouch.
Trujillo is all about the name-calling. And that is part of the dysfunction of City Hall. There is no serious analysis of policy alternatives. Rather, the politically connected feed at the public trough, and scream "racist" whenever someone has the gall to suggest that local government should advance the public interest rather than special interests.
Trujillo needs to explore new career opportunities. Name-calling did not pass Measure B, did not fool the Judge, and did not elect Janice Hahn to the Lieutenant Governor's office. Nor will it stop the liberals, conservatives and moderates in L.A. Clean Sweep from putting good people in office in March 2011.
WWII bomber pilots could tell when they were over the target because that's when they started taking “Flak”.
ReplyDelete“Bombs Away”, Mr. Moore.
A Harbor City Resident
GREAT ANALOGY!
ReplyDeleteThey are trying to smear me and hurt the cause because they know L.A. Clean Sweep can do just what it's name implies: sweep the crooks out of City Hall.