[img]1574|left|Kevin James||no_popup[/img]There was Kevin James, at 11 o’clock this morning, standing in front of the towering, majestic – not to mention mysterious – Dept. of Water and Power building, his silhouette outlined for the cameras against a vast, azure downtown sky, across the broadness of Hope Street from the venerable Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
It was an auspicious setting with, the 49-year-old former federal prosecutor hoped, an auspicious message.
The handsome and underdog Los Angeles mayoralty candidate Kevin James is powerfully convinced – has been for months – that his most imposing rival between here and City Hall, City Controller Wendy Greuel, is covering up something crucial.
He was here to scold Ms. Greuel this time for deliberately omitting the fatter-than-average salaries of DWP workers – the group that is heavily, spectacularly underwriting her campaign from a published list of city salaries.
Mr. James accuses her of purposely listing the salaries of all city employees except those of the DWP _ because her supporters there earn on the average 40 percent more pay than non-DWP workers make for the same duties.
Most notably this week, Mr. James has pursued Brian D’Arcy, head of the IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and his charges at the DWP, and their supposedly shadowy relationship with Ms. Greuel.
She is and will continue to do their bidding, he asserts.
Two days after standing by the steps of City Hall and excoriating Ms. Greuel for alleged ethical violations, he came back today in another glistening setting.
Arguably the most articulate of the five contenders, and by miles the only Republican, Mr. James is campaigning as he has since last summer – with a sheen of ferocity that is missing in his rivals.
(When a reported observed that only four debates are left before Election Day, March 5, Mr. James said, “I wish we had a debate every day.”)
“Wendy Greuel is the DWP’s puppet,” Mr. James charged. “D’Arcy trusts her to do whatever the unions want. That is clear by the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are funneling into her campaign.”
He thinks she is masking a bulging basket of secrets in her airborne campaign to nail down the mayor’s chair fast and early, in the primary election.
For two months, Mr. James has been testing putatively vulnerable areas of Ms. Greuel’s lengthy electoral record for damning evidence that will riddle her apparently front-running bid.
He contends that she has been too cozy for comfort with the city’s most influential labor players, and will maintain a so-called sweetheart relationship if she – the overwhelming choice of city labor unions – is elected.
