Re “Reasons Why James Draws Unusual Attention for a Los Angeles Conservative”
[img]1646|left|Kevin James||no_popup[/img]If Kevin James qualifies next month for the May 21 runoff in the Los Angeles mayoralty race, he can thank City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Mr. James personally and/or his views sorely vex Ms. Greuel.
She is easily the most voluble, aggressively raw player in a five-person field that offers four lookalike, soundalike liberals and the conservative Mr. James.
[img]1670|left|Wendy Gruel||no_popup[/img]However, until Ms. Greuel broke her tongue-biting silence in mid-December at a candidates Forum in Little Tokyo, her liberal teammates unanimously and successfully had been pretending for months that Mr. James, a 49-year-old entertainment lawyer and former federal prosecutor, was a mirage.
The frequent forums at that stage served up a daily miracle.
Even though the liberals boasted of their numerous accomplishments during the past decade while largely ignoring City Hall’s virtually worst-in-the-country fiscal problems, and even though Mr. James countered with (liberally unpalatable) palliatives, the lopsided differences dividing him from them consistently were ignored, by moderators and journalists.
Alternative View? Where?
With dazzling clarity Mr. James had been cleanly, deftly criticizing his rivals as insiders who had caused the governmental mess that is Los Angeles, contending that it would be illogical to expect any of them to bring solutions to the problems they had caused, like asking an arsonist to extinguish a fire.
Then Ms. Greuel, the chatter champion of the field, flung open a door.
Early in her political career, Ms. Greuel had been a marginal Republican before converting enthusiastically to liberalism in the early ‘90s, embracing traditional convert-style zealotry.
As her confidence in her chances of becoming the next mayor has expanded at a gallop in recent weeks, the tone of outspokenness by the aggressive advocate for ubiquitous government and public sector labor unions, has become markedly bolder.
Cameras Were So Tempting
Up to a Saturday night just before Christmas, all of the candidates publicly had conducted themselves with flawless circumspection. They were as impersonal as blind strangers, even though they may have been seeing each other more often than their spouses. Impersonalness soared to withering heights. When speaking, each acted as if he were the only person on stage, as if no one else were competing for mayor.
At the Little Tokyo debate, the first to be televised, Ms. Greuel no longer was able to contain her gritty feelings about Mr. James.
Out of nowhere, for the pleasure of the viewing audience, Ms. Greuel unoriginally lambasted Mr. James, an openly gay Republican who supports gay marriage, as a right-wing extremist. Since he was a conservative who had weaved two radio gigs, spanning nine years, into a successful law career, Ms. Greuel was unable to resist the cliché that he was a shock jock, a Rush Limbaugh wannabe.
Mr. James flung off the temptation to laud Ms. Greuel’s shrewd phrase-turning.
After Little Tokyo, the stream of Greuel campaign criticism turned sharply downstream against Mr. James.
What made the scenario so curious and groundbreaking was that Ms. Greuel’s darts at Mr. James, down now to three weeks before the March 5 primary election, remain the only personal clash that has been sounded by any of the contenders.
For the conservative candidate, Ms. Greuel’s rant was a gift that seems to have been paying off for him ever since.
Several weeks later, the candidate with a modest pocketbook reaped a whirlwind of publicity by uncovering alleged ethical violations in her daily office calendar, a matter presently in limbo. He has been pounding at her meanderings into fringe territory – such as her proposal/promise to her labor union allies to hire 2,000 more cops and 800 more firefighters as City Hall staves off bankruptcy.
If Mr. James has the momentum he claims, he knows who helped him break through the standard Los Angeles media resistance to non-liberal office seekers.
(To be continued)
