[img]1697|left|Mr. Carmen Trutanich||no_popup[/img]Carmen Trutanich, running hard in the last week and a half of the campaign to remain Los Angeles City Attorney, lashed out this morning at chief challenger Mike Feuer for, he said, branding the incumbent “a Republican wing-nut” in thousands of mailers to voters before the March 5 primary.
Before his rival retaliated, Mr. Trutanich, almost shaking as he stood by the southerly steps of City Hall, emphatically denied he is a Republican, much less a Democrat in this supposedly non-partisan race.
“I am a moderate,” the first-term City Attorney insisted.
Moderate Republican or moderate Democrat?
“Neither one,” he said. “Just moderate. I go on a case-by-case basis.”
This is easily the bitterest, the most colorful of the city races going into the primary in 10 days and runoff, if necessary, on May 21.
Mr. Feuer, you can bet your children’s inheritance, did not merely stroke his chin and continue campaigning unabated.
Boasting of an advantage in both fundraising and endorsements, Mr. Feuer swung back with a swift sock.
“I think Trutanich is getting increasingly desperate,” Mr. Feuer told the newspaper this afternoon.
“You can tell from how shrill his vocabulary was this morning, and also by how off-the-mark his approach is.
“He doesn’t like the fact I point out in my radio commercial that he refuses to take a pay cut.
“It’s pretty hard for him to throw it back in my lap. I have said that were I to be in the City Attorney’s office, I would fight against the furloughs (of office staff). I think they are a bad idea.
“As long as they have to be in place, I will take a cut equal to the deepest cut endured by any lawyer in the office.
“I guess he is trying to distract from the fact he refuses to do that.
“He has said in debates, ‘Mike, I earn my money,’ a remark which had a significant impact among lawyers in his office who have to endure the pay cuts.
“He said something else about my work in Sacramento where, of course, I took a pay cut (although Mr. Trutanich asserted otherwise).
“What happened in Sacramento should be beside the point,” Mr. Feuer said. “But if he wants to compare his behavior to mine, I took a pay cut so that my salary was less than half of his.
“He earns more than the governor does, and he refuses to take a pay cut. He has to live with the consequences of that choice.”
Reading from a four-page statement, Mr. Trutanich was so infuriated that he said his campaign will ask the County Democratic Party to rescind its endorsement of Mr. Feuer.
