On the morning before Election Day, the mountain of odds looks just as imposing as it did two months ago for the preferred candidate for the 8th District of the Los Angeles City Council, Forescee Hogan-Rowles, to defeat the incumbent Bernie Parks.
As the Los Angeles Titanic noted this morning, County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas — who never has lost an election — is pumping hard to bring Ms. Hogan-Rowles across the finish line ahead of the chief, and so is organized labor.
Neither of these muscular allies was in the neighborhood eight years ago when Mr. Parks, casting himself as a victim after being freshly ousted from the LAPD, skunked Ms. Hogan-Rowles. She swears it took her less than 24 hours to regain her footing after a lopsided loss.
In the interim, the president of a successful South Los Angeles non-profit for the last 15 years has matured.
She still is the same bundle of irrepressible energy she was on her first run, in contrast to the virtually stoic, withdrawn Mr. Parks.
Retrieving her coffee and taking it to a patio table at a restaurant near her headquarters, the effusive Ms. Hogan-Rowles had more to say than Mr. Parks has since she began her campaign last July.
Plotting a New Bid
“In ’03, I was focused in on not burning bridges,” she told this newspaper. “I didn’t want to offend people just because they didn’t support me. Holding a grudge is not me. Instead, I wanted to develop those relationships over time, keep in touch with folks and learn new things. I learned that year that you must stay focused and be prepared for anything. I think I have lived up to that.
“From ’03 to 2011, I have done quite a few things that have better prepared me for this time. Having endorsements is important (she has major labor backing, which has been crucially important financially), and so is having a record that people can inspect without you getting squeamish about it.
“I was on the Dept. of Water and Power Commission, I was on the California Commission for Economic Development, and I serve on the Federal Affordable Housing Advisory Council.
“In the last eight years, I really have honed in on my work at the Community Financial Resource Center.
How Do You Pronounce?
“I decided in ’03 that if things weren’t going well in eight years, I was going to run again, and here I am.”
Fortunately, voters are not required to enunciate the name of the candidate they are supporting — then, for sure, Ms. Hogan-Rowles never would be elected over the crusty, law-flirting or law-flouting incumbent Mr. Parks.
Her first and second handicaps are her given name and her surnames.
Running for office with a hyphenated name is like steering a car with your hands behind your back. Yes, I know Mr. Ridley-Thomas has been getting re-elected for a couple of decades. But his first name is the easily identifiable Mark, which quickly leavens the argument.
1-2-3
Ms. Hogan-Rowles’s opponent not only is a celebrity of sorts, his name is as quick to say, as easy to remember as Gene Kelly. Two syllables in the first name — whether you prefer Bernie or Bernard — and only a single syllable in the family name, which is as common as sky or air or, critics would say, dirt.
Ms. Hogan-Rowles’s message is that she has been a successful businesswoman the last two decades.
There are several problems with that — only one of her doing, and none that she truly could control.
Her opponent probably carries the strongest profile on the City Council, owing entirely to his lifelong career with the LAPD — never mind that he was and remains less popular with the department than Richard Nixon at a Watergate reunion.
Mr. Parks’s two inarguably undistinguished terms on the City Council remind me of the current rage over the Sheen punk. If Sheen sneezes, a story follows. Publicly, there seems to be an element of the incumbent that is sacred. His press is reliably favorable except for the stories every campaign cycle — every campaign — in which you would have to believe he deliberately has committed campaign donor violations.
Don’t forget, this is the former Chief of Police, not a recovering garbageman.
His arrogance and lack of accomplishments are stunning, separately and cumulatively.
Besides being on the exactly wrong side of all 10 ballot measures in yesterday’s edition, the Los Angeles Titanic struggled once again to justify its automatic endorsement of Mr. Parks. Something stinks here. Whether the Titanic is beholden to Mr. Parks for an undisclosed reason or the boys who do endorsements at the Titanic are punishing Ms. Hogan-Rowles for her DWP affiliation, I am not sure.
While the question of whether endorsements matter in this age is a question for a different time, the Titanic embarrasses itself as it gropes, desperately, to finger the weakest, least imaginative reasons for snubbing the plainly qualified Ms. Hogan-Rowles in favor of Mr. Zero.
The Titanic’s language throbs with bizarre echoes:
“One of the only members of the current City Council willing to stand up to L.A.’s powerful public employee unions, Parks has boundless experience and an unusual willingness to challenge the status quo.”
Odd.
1. Since the immovably left-wing Titanic believes that the public union employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are God’s children and their opponents are dirty, rotten guys, when did the newspaper change its mind?
2. “Boundless experience”? So has a friend who lives in a nursing home in the Valley. But at 99 years old, he would make a lousy Council member.
3. What, praytell, does the idiotic statement “an unusual willingness to challenge the status quo” mean? The Titanic tells us every morning believe the opposite, at least with public sector unions. The left-wing boys who cover the news for the Titanic and their lefty betters who write editorials have been viciously assaulting Gov. Walker of Wisconsin since the day last month they read The New York Times and learned he was challenging the corrupt labor union status quo in Wisconsin.
The Titanic should have confessed they could not think of a valid reason instead of twisting a vacuous argument into a left-wing knot.
