As the South Bay scans the earth for a worthy successor to retired U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), a supposedly little-known Palos Verdes businessman, Craig Huey, runs off in today’s special election against the divine Janice Hahn, Los Angeles City Councilwoman, who says she has changed the world.
In that event, why would the hapless Mr. Huey, a 60-year-old Republican trailing the polls by at least 8 points, even remain in the race?
Demonstrating the immensity of her imagination, Ms. Hahn says that two pillars define her fraught, hard-fought campaign that was supposed to be a breeze:
• She says she has created “green jobs” and is a devout believer in refreshingly clean air while us unwashed peasants, naturally, ask God every morning to bless us with a renewed swath of filthy air.
• If she is lucky enough to be elected to go to Washington, she pledges that, by Murgatroyd, she will toil titanically to impose draconian taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” a cute phrase I have heard a trillion times, but I just cannot recall where.
Hahn-y, You Are Beautiful
Isn’t that appealing agenda as irresistible as waving a steak before the eyes of a man who has dieted on moths for the past month?
Janice Hahn is no Kenny Hahn, and slowly, hopefully, South Bay voters may be starting to realize that, although she has been elected to the City Council three times.
I have no idea whether Mr. Huey has enough strength to upset the woman who, like good liberals, is running on euphemisms, catch phrases and specific inspecificities.
I Am for Cleanliness
I always am suspicious of heavy-lipped carnival barkers who run on an environmental agenda because they are impossible to pin down. Check her record. The environment is so amorphous, and I have yet to encounter one scholar who is a vaguely serious person in the leadership of this screwball circus.
Swishy ran on a “green jobs” platform three years ago, though, and there were enough naïve people out there to put him in office. But his ineptness, passivity and spectacular lack of involvement —did you notice the weekend jobs report?— should sideline him next year.
Ms. Hahn, meanwhile, calculates that she can draw a critical mass of turkeys to the polls today who still will swallow her environmental talk as if it were irrefutably true. But avoid specifics with her, please.
I read that the Port of Los Angeles is seeking— that is present tense — to cut pollution by 80 percent.
Go for it, pal. Inflate the numbers. By the time the rubes deduce you don’t know any more about unfouling the air than they do, it will be too late. You already will be in office, and incumbents traditionally are difficult to dislodge.
And so, along comes Little Ms. Muffet who plopped onto a fragrant environmental tuffet, fluttered her aging eyes and said, my gosh, what a good girl am I. I have reduced pollution at the port by 50 percent.
It doesn’t scan on my calculator.
Eighty percent plus fifty percent is one hundred and thirty percent, which is called sound environmental math.
Wow, Janice, baby. May I hire you as my accountant? Together, we could become twin millionaires by Thursday.
Yeah, for clean air. Phooey on Huey.
