If Austin Beutner can’t do it, nobody can.
Here’s a fabulously wealthy guy with a proven track record of success at everything he tried, a man who retired after he broke his neck in a cycling accident and decided at age 50 to dedicate himself to philanthropy and public service.
When Antonio Villaraigosa was lost in the doldrums of near total failure of his administration, he handed over control of just about everything at City Hall except the budget, police and fire to Beutner to straighten out.
It was a natural assignment for a man who made his fortune turning around distressed companies and Beutner assembled an economic development and jobs creation team of skilled people — many like him working for a dollar a year — and began to cut deals that achieved some of those goals.
What he saw inside City Hall appalled him: Lethargy, waste, inefficiency, incompetence and worst of all meddling by small-time politicians who derailed solutions to long-standing problems unless they or their friends could profit from them in one way or another.
When the Department of Water and Power was thrown into chaos by the bumbling leadership of David Freeman and his cohort Raman Raj (a twice fired top executive who is still drawing disability pay despite working as a consultant for a DWP contractor), it was Beutner who was called upon to clean up the mess and stabilize the situation.
His experiences as a deputy mayor for 18 months whetted his appetite for more and Beutner decided to run for mayor, believing that as difficult as the city’s problems are, a lot could be done to strengthen the economy and make the quality of our lives better.
It only took a few months for him to realize it was an impossible dream no matter how many millions of his personal fortune he poured into his campaign, no matter how much his wealthy friends could add to the kitty.
He called it quits on Tuesday, citing family obligations that he couldn’t fulfill if he was going to be running around the city day and night building support and overcoming the name recognition advantages of the insiders — Greuel, Garcetti and Perry.
It is easy to blame each of those insiders, as I have done so often, for their roles in running the city into the ground.
Yet the polls show you the people love them: The three city officials and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky who is not yet a candidate each get support from roughly 20 percent of registered voters and the other outsider, attorney and radio talk show host Kevin James, is at 7 percent.
Beutner ranked last at 2 percent!
Think about it: If guys like Kevin James and Austin Beutner who have records of real achievement in the private sector and in public service get support from less than one in 10 voters combined and the people in public office who have failed time and again get support from everybody else, whose fault is it for the way things are — the pols or the people?
It’s the same in every other race up for grabs in the March 2013 city election.
Traffic cop Dennis Zine who has done everything he could to loot the city treasury as a police union official and Council member is the odds-on favorite to win the City Controller’s race against two highly qualified citizen activists, Cary Brazeman and Ron Galperin.
Legislators who deserve opprobrium for wrecking the state are heavily favored to win the City Attorney’s race (Mike Feuer) and most of the open Council seats (Gil Cedillo, Mike Davis, Felipe Fuentes and Bob Blumenfield, who is so contemptuous of voters he is running simultaneously for re-election to the Assembly where he is in charge of the budget and the City Council).
The fault lies not in our stars but ourselves.
Is there a single elected official in Los Angeles at any level of city, state or federal government who can demonstrate that they have courageously stood up against the policies that have failed the people?
Some better than others certainly. But it always comes down to at best the lesser of two evils with the outsiders, honorable citizens who have achieved success in the private sector, not standing a chance with voters who insist on preserving their ignorance and apathy, putting a smiley face on failure or being grateful for a few crumbs from the table of power.
Even on those rarest of occasions when an outsider like Carmen Trutanich beats a consummate insider like Jack Weiss, it doesn’t take long before he reveals himself to be a blatant liar and betrayer of his promises to the community.
The problem isn’t the people like Greuel and Garcetti and their colleagues set out to be crooks anymore than poor kids in our ghettos and barrios set out to be violent criminals.
It’s the culture they operate in that makes their behavior seem like a sane adaptation to an insane environment.
There is at least some evidence that the gang culture is changing but none at all that the political culture is. In fact, it is more corrupt than ever with just about everything up for sale to the highest bidder.
Even now with the miracle of 20/20 vision restored to my tired old eyes, the future of LA still looks dark to me, although as Beutner said in his farewell email about giving up the dream of becoming mayor, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Los Angeles will only realize its potential if city leaders face up to the challenges and make the right choices. We need to fix our schools because good public education is a civil right and the foundation of our future. We need to create solutions to the problems of traffic, broken streets and sidewalks and the lack of adequate public transportation. We need a city which can live within its means and can effectively provide core services like police and fire. And we need once again to make Los Angeles a city where private sector employers can prosper – creating good paying jobs and providing the tax base to pay for the services the city has to provide.
I intend to keep working to make a difference in our community. We can’t settle for the same old promises only to find nothing gets done. We face tough choices ahead and we’ll need elected leadership who will make the right ones.
Real change in Los Angeles is only going to happen if you stay engaged. In the words of the great philosopher, the Lorax, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
I agree with every word in those sentences.
The corruption and cynicism in government would fade away in a minute if the people rose up and threw the rascals out, refused to vote for any elected official who couldn’t show beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have been true public servants and not servants of themselves and special interests.
Before Beutner and his friends get in bed with Wendy Greuel or any of the other elected officials who want to be mayor, city attorney, controller, council member, legislator or Congress member, they need to consider whether any of those insiders can bring out the change they know is needed.
It isn’t a mystery.