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Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Seriously, who was the R? Was it Riordan or something like that? Bloomberg?
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Richard Riordan was the last Republican mayor. Hahn succeeded him in 2001.
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In any case, the fundamental point is the same. The race is making LA look as stoopid as Chicago typically does during a race. The crime issue is a no-brainer.
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LA's problems are myriad and deep, but when I read the LA Times and listed to the radio reports on the mayoral race, I don't read much at all about this "crime issue" you find to be such a prism into the intelligence of the populace.
I've neither seen nor heard anyone discussing "get[ting] rid of the [s]R[/s] mayor rather than hire 2000 more police officers like Bratton requested."
Hahn's troubles for re-election revolve largely around the fact that he hired (and more importantly later fired) an African American police chief who had risen through the ranks. From what I've read, people seem to think that his firing was a good idea substantively, but it deeply alienated the black community, which is a big chunk of the electorate for mayor.
Hahn is currently polling about 50-50 with his challenger Villaragosa, and that's substantially down from last time, when he won about 80% of the black vote. Right now the two are flinging insults at each other as being untrustworthy, and very little of the heat generated by the debates seem to revolve around the hiring or nonhiring of police officers.
Notably, the biggest problem in the LA mayoral race is that the citizenry is almost uniformly ignoring it. This self-absorption of the populace is, I understand, a hallmark of Los Angeles politics in between riots, plagues, or other events of crisis.
