Fratricide, The Fungible Four, And L.A.'s Next Mayor

What do game theory, ICBMs and the next L.A. Mayoral election have to do with one another?  Man, you sure ask some screwy questions.  But I can answer that one, albeit in an uncharacteristically long-winded way:

As you know, I always try to work into every conversation the fact that I did indeed graduate from Princeton. "What time is it?"  "It's the same time that my Econ 101 class started back when I was at Princeton -- 10:00 a.m."  If I did not belabor the fact that I went Princeton, people would have absolutely no way of knowing I used to be smart.

Back at Princeton, I took this upper-level math class called "Mathematical Programming," in which we studied, among other things, game theory and optimization.  (Yeah, just like that "Beautiful Mind" movie, but without the schizophrenia.)  The idea -- to the extent I had any inkling what the professor was talking about -- was to use math to figure out the optimal course of action given a particular set of constraints, whether you were running a factory, searching for enemy submarines, or doing all that electrical engineering stuff that went right over my head.  (I was the only student in the class not majoring in engineering, which, in retrospect, should have told me I was in over my head.)

My senior thesis likewise basically applied game theory to nuclear war strategy and, in particular, to something called "hard-target counterforce." The issue -- in the era before smart bombs -- was whether we should develop nuclear missiles accurate enough to blow up the U.S.S.R.'s nuclear missiles in their silos, or whether instead any benefits from doing so would be outweighed by an increased risk of panicking the U.S.S.R. into launching first in a crisis ("use it or lose it").

Now, as you already know, our nuclear missiles have -- or at least had, back then -- multiple warheads, which were called "multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles" or "MIRVs" for short.  But what you may not know is that our rocket scientists were concerned that if we tried to use two or more MIRVs for the same target, one warhead could detonate at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and blow the other warhead up or at least off target.  Result:  failure to incinerate the intended city, military base or submarine pen.

The rocket scientists called this phenomenon, whereby targeting multiple warheads for the same destination results in none of them working, "fratricide."

Okay, now, finally, here is what all that has to do with the next L.A. Mayoral election:

The other day or week -- it's all a blur to me -- yet another one of the City Hall's status quo insiders has announced that he, too, is uniquely suited to be the City's next Mayor, just like the other current and former City Hall insiders running for the same office, all of whom have voted exactly the same way on everything about 99% of the time.

If you compared the positions and "accomplishments" of candidates Jan Perry, Wendy Greuel, Eric Garcetti and Austin Beutner during their time in public office at City Hall, well, you'd be hard pressed to find any distinctions between them.  In fact, let's call them "the Fungible Four."

They are all essentially the same person. During the time the Fungible Four have run our city, unemployment has climbed much higher than in the surrounding county, the surrounding state, and the surrounding nation.  They are the quadruplets of the status quo. (Dang, that would be a good nickname, too, but I've already committed to "Fungible Four.")

The Fungible Four:  Greuel, Perry, Garcetti and Beutner -- which is which?

Now, each of the Fungible Four aims to become our next Mayor.  They are like four MIRVs targeted on Los Angeles. That is the bad news. The good news is, they are likely to blow each other way off target.

Think about it: since they all have exactly the same positions on everything, and they all have exactly the same record of "achievement," each of them is going to have exactly the same appeal to the same group of (misinformed) voters.  They are going to cut into one another's voting block. Fratricide, baby, fratricide.

This is excellent news for the one good candidate in the race, namely, attorney and radio talk-show host Kevin James.  A fortiori, this is also good news for the city's residents.  (You like that?  "A fortiori?"  Know where I learned that term?  Princeton.)

The Mayoral Race has an "open primary."  That means voters will have to choose between the Fungible Four, on the one hand, and Kevin James, on the other.  (There will also be some other self-proclaimed "candidates" sitting at the "kook table," but we can ignore them for now.)

Assume for the sake of argument that a 60% of voters, misled by millions of dollars of special interest money that props up the Fungible Four, cast their ballots for one of these status quo candidates, and the other 40% have the good sense to vote for Kevin James.  This seems like a reasonable assumption, insofar as only about 56% of the very few people who showed up for the March 2009 election condemned the rest of us to another four years of Villaraigosa.

Well, if the Fungible Four split that 60% evenly (i.e., 15% each), then Kevin James will be in a run-off. After all, 40% beats 15%.  And even if one of the Fungible Four got, say, 40% of the vote, with the other three splitting 20% of the vote, Kevin James would still be in a run-off.

That is terrific news, because a run-off would focus attention on the election, and give Kevin James a real forum to explain what is wrong with City Hall now, and how he can fix it and turn this city around.

Bottom line:  "fratricide" may very well save this City from four more years of the Fungible Four aka the Quadruplets.