Los Angeles City Council District 3 Primary Results: Bob Blumenfield Wins Over Joyce Pearson

By Jill Stewart Wed., Mar. 6 2013 at 9:40 AM

Bob Blumenfield

Despite his massive spending, Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield barely gained the votes needed to beat neighborhood council activist Joyce Pearson in Los Angeles City Council District 3 race in the West San Fernando Valley.

Blumenfield, one of the more audacious job-hoppers from Sacramento, who has nearly two years left to serve there and now will abandon that post, squeaked into office with 51.62 percent. He faced the vastly underfunded Pearson, who won 19.96 percent, and numerous other civic activists and leaders who split the rest of the votes.

Blumenfield's less than resounding win -- despite big name ID, big union backing, big spending and an L.A. Times endorsement -- is expected to energize Valley neighborhood council activists and other reform-minded non-politicians who have yet to break into top echelons of Los Angeles power despite many election attempts.

Blumenfield is one of several legislators and ex-legislators in the career movement dubbed "Sacramento South" who are seeking highly lucrative $178,789 Los Angeles City Council jobs.

California legislators are paid $135,000, including a base salary plus an extravagant "per diem," but the City Council pay is higher than that of the U.S. Congress. So it's a major step up from mere California state legislator.

The Sacramento South movement has set off intense debate among political watchers over how many of Sacramento's bad habits these politicians will spread to Los Angeles City Hall. Other results from Council District 3:

Joyce Pearson

Unofficial election counts with all precincts reporting showed Elizabeth Badger fourth with 9.4 percent and Cary Iaccino third with 9.8 percent.

Before Blumenfield announced he was running for City Council he was dragooned by blogger and former Los Angeles Daily News Editor Ron Kaye, who peppered him with questions about his "abusive" and "outrageous" plan to abandon his State Assembly District 45 seat if he could win the L.A. City Council seat.

Kaye, with a videographer taping his testy-yet-funny exchange, demanded to know, "Are you going to pay for the special election?!" (that will have to be held if Blumenfield leaves the Assembly almost two years early to join the L.A. City Council.)

Kaye never got his answer. Blumenfield talked around the job-hopping controversy for several minutes, looking slightly ill.

Blumenfield did get one good line off, however, retorting, " I don't know if you want to see my retina scan, if that's what you're trying for."

Pearson is perhaps best known for buying into the glittery claims of Australian mall giant Westfield, which promised the communities of Canoga Park and Warner Center that it was going to build an upscale, transit-oriented development "village" of homes and shops on a vast piece of land walking distance from the Orange Line.

Many residents and advocates believed the gazillionaire developers and spent thousands of hours over several years working out plans with Westfield for the "village."

Then Westfield announced it was going to build a Costco instead, and a whole lot less village.

In the controversy that followed, City Councilman Dennis Zine largely acted as an apologist for Westfield. Pearson publicly castigated Zine for failing to call public meetings on the issue, and wrote a stormy editorial in a small Valley newspaper, saying:

Costco hasn't even relocated yet, but it is already turning what Westfield once promised as an upscale "shop/dine/work destination" into a strip mall with a wholesale arm behind it, that is destined to hurt traffic, surrounding businesses and neighborhoods, not to mention leaving blight behind in Canoga Park, just blocks away.

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strictlyna

Bob is going to be a very busy man!!

Mang

I think when Ms. Stewart writes "squeaked-by", she means Blumenfield barely received over 50% of the votes needed to avoid a runoff. Just 2 percentage points lower, then he would have had a May runoff battle with second-placer, Joyce Pearson.

David

@Mang If that is what Ms. Stewart meant, she would have said that Mr. Blumenfield narrowly avoided a runoff. Instead she said he "barely gained the votes" to defeat Ms. Pearson, which gives the false impression that the race was close. She said that Mr. Blumenfield's victory was "less than resounding," which is false. A first-ballot majority in a six-candidate field, more than doubling your nearest opponent's total, is a substantial win. She said that his election is "expected" to energize "reform" elements (i.e., people who share Jill Stewart's anti-labor, anti-Democratic obsessions), which is a tendentious editorial opinion masquerading as news. She refers to Mr. Blumenfield as an "audacious job hopper" who is "abandoning" his legislative post, simply because he served two terms as assemblymember, rather than the three that were legally permitted to him, if he had been reelected. In any other context, Ms. Stewart would praise a legislator who chose shorter service in Sacramento. It is dishonest of Ms. Stewart to support forcing legislators out of office through term limits, and then attack one who leaves voluntarily as "abandoning" his office. Sadly, this dishonesty is par for the course at the LA Weekly under Ms. Stewart.

David

1 Like

The deep dishonesty of Jill Stewart's reporting (and editing) continues to be breathtaking. Far from squeaking into office (as Ms. Stewart's fantasy alleges), Bob Blumenfield gained a first-round majority in a field of six, winning more than twice as many votes as his nearest competitor. That's a comfortable victory to every observer except the LA Weekly, which Ms. Stewart long ago turned into a cesspool of anti-Democratic, anti-labor agitprop, dominated by Fox News-type smears and distortions. There was a time when the LA Weekly amounted to something in this town. Now its "reporting" is simply a bitter, vengeful, reactionary mess. Los Angeles deserves better than the LA Weekly.