First in a series
[img]1610|left|Mike Feuer||no_popup[/img]Button-down Mike Feuer presents such a strong alternative to the incumbent Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich in the March 5 primary that even a Martian could isolate the challenger in a lookalike crowd.
In his second run for the office that he slenderly lost to now-disappeared Rocky Delgadillo a dozen springs ago, Mr. Feuer (pronounced Fewer), tall, slim, handsomely, boyishly curly-haired, is making the courageous stand of his personal/professional life.
Eleven weeks ago this afternoon, his spare 54-year-old body was crushed like an empty cereal box when a careless driver slammed into Mr. Feuer’s vehicle at an intersection near USC.
It took the Jaws of Life to extricate the lawyer from his mangled car.
The former City Councilman and state Assemblyman was en route to the inauguration of freshly elected County District Attorney Jackie Lacey at the Galen Center.
Seriously injured and sent straight to ICU, his vulnerable ribs were trampled. A camera view of his mashed innards showed they looked like a dreadfully painful, unintentional omelette.
What Happened
The other driver allegedly ran a red light. Mr. Feuer suffered multiple rib fractures, a bruised lung and spleen laceration.
Three months later, he walks without a limp as he dashes into a Fairfax District cafe, several understandable ticks late.
The miracles started the week of the accident, and they have not relented.
He means to win this time, and Mr. Feuer’s campaign, it says here, never even slowed between his near-devastating accident on Monday and his stunningly unexpected walk out of the hospital on Saturday.
Recovery is for other patients.
“I can’t afford to miss a day,” he said.
How did he do it?
Astonishing inner strength and a cement-level will to win, says his campaign.
He unfolded awkwardly out of bed each morning whereas, said doctors, others in his condition would have remained under the blankets.
He was campaigning, in pain, six days after his accident. The pain almost never has taken a holiday in the last 90 days. Even now, as Mr. Feuer tours the corners, crevices, high-profile and traditionally overlooked neighborhoods of Los Angeles, from the docks to the hottest corner of the West Valley and the most distant East Side barrio, he probably is being generous when he says he has recovered 85 percent while working the streets, offices, groups large and small, 15 to 20 hours each day of the week.
Can Mr. Feuer outwork his opponent and prevail in two weeks.
“The only way to win in a citywide race,” he says, “is to work as hard as one can in every neighborhood in Los Angeles.
“It has been a very intense period of time. Obviously days differ, but may I say this has been a wonderful experience. The energy required for this job also comes with the territory. It is an energizing process to be walking precincts from one neighborhood to the other, visiting community meetings.”
(To be continued)
