GUEST CANDIDATE COLUMN - March 5 is election day ... Primary day for candidates seeking the offices of Mayor, City Attorney, City Controller, and for each potential Council member in the odd-numbered council districts.
March 5 also has the potential of going down in history as either ‘continuation’ day or ‘change’ day. That will depend on the whether the people are ready to give real change a chance … whether, in the mind of the electorate, enough is really enough. I am running for City Attorney. I want to be the people’s attorney. While the ‘status quo’ candidates want this election to be a ‘Seinfeld’ election (an election about ‘nothing’), my objective is to draw out the candidates in the City Attorney race on substantive issues … what they would do, and why, in response to specific situations.The office of the City Attorney is a very special and unique office, with a vast reservoir of unused potential to be able to ensure that the system operates as intended, which is for the benefit of the people, not the politicians or their special interest (and well-connected) friends and contributors.Currently, members of the City Council erroneously and arrogantly believe the City Attorney works for them; that they can make use of the office to protect their individual and political backsides, even when in many cases they fail to observe the most basic of the rules they impose on themselves.The ‘client’ of the City Attorney is the public trust known as the City of Los Angeles. The functions of this public trust are implemented by way of a legal fiction established in the Charter that the City of Los Angeles shall be considered as a ‘municipal corporation’.In subsequent and regular articles to CityWatch between now and election day, I will attempt to detail my qualifications for the office and the approach I would take if elected as City Attorney.In so doing, my hope is to draw out the other candidates for the office so the voting public has an incentive to go and vote for the candidate who best reflects his or her views.In this way (depending on the number of people who vote), the winner could lay claim to a mandate for either change, or for the maintenance of the status quo. The office of City Attorney can and should act as a ‘check’ and a ‘balance’ on the political excesses, lawlessness, and improper conduct of the City Council and the Mayor.My goal will be to bring the ideas to life via specific examples from my successful efforts through the years on behalf of the ‘little guy and gal’ and how I was able to bend the system away from the special interests toward the broader public interest; the same kind of approach I would take as City Attorney, if elected.One of my core beliefs is that ‘Happiness Comes in Disguised Packages’ … that life is a journey in search of all of those little golden nuggets that lie buried, just waiting to be mined. All we have to do is just put forth the effort to dig them out.Our destiny and our direction will be forged out of the determination we individually and collectively bring to the task. The current political leadership is falling well short. They are ‘coasting’ when we need them to ‘soar’. Continually rewarding mediocrity is not the path toward excellence.That is why enough is really enough!We’ll see if the people concur in that judgment. The election is March 5.(This is a promotional article by and for Noel Weiss, candidate for City Attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected])-cwCityWatchVol 11 Issue 2Pub: Jan 4, 2013
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