by Garrison Frost

There's a short street in Lomita that, just before it hits Western Avenue, actually becomes part of the city of Los Angeles. Walking down this street, you can see firsthand all that is wrong with the larger city. On the Lomita side, the pavement is unbroken and freshly sealed, the sidewalks and curbs are undamaged and consistent. Just a foot into Los Angeles, however, the pavement is falling apart, crumbling with deep cracks and holes. The sidewalks are a broken mess. For a resident of Lomita, it's a nice reminder of how efficient a small government can be. For those in Los Angeles, it's enough to make them want to throw the bums about.

Well, they've got their chance to do exactly that this week. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't.

But heaven knows we'll hear about it. For people in the South Bay, and many other places in the greater Los Angeles megalopolis, the city of Los Angeles elections are a big circus that parades down our streets but, alas, ultimately sets up its tents elsewhere. We're not residents of the city of Los Angeles, so we don't get to vote in that election. But we get to watch the news coverage and television commercials, read the campaign signs and newspaper articles. By the time Election Day rolls around, we know more about what the incumbent has or hasn't done – and what the challengers will or won't do – than we do about our own sad little elected officials. We have strong opinions about who should be the mayor of Los Angeles, but nobody's listening.

Oh sure, they do let us vote for our own wimpy little mayors, mayors who often don't have any power to do anything more than break a city council tie on whether or not to issue a conditional use permit to a guy wanting to build a fence in his backyard. Greg Hill? Dan Walker? Terrence S. Terauchi? Just a few blocks away they're choosing between Antonio Villaraigosa, Bob Hertzberg and Jim Hahn, and we?re over here talking about – oh god, can we really be expected to remember their names?

Most of our cities don't even have mayors, at least not real mayors. No, our mayors are council members who rotate the title ever few years so everyone gets a chance to hold the gavel. How fair, and how boring!

The residents of Los Angeles get former police chiefs as candidates. They get state senators and speakers of the Assembly. We get real estate agents and more real estate agents – people who not only want to do some good for the community, but who also want to take advantage of the tremendous networking opportunities that the office provides.

Of the five leading candidates for mayor of Los Angeles, Redondo Beach would be thrilled to have the worst of them. Something tells me that Richard Alarcon would do a better job than Greg Hill. At least we would be certain he wouldn?t end up on "Blind Date." And why not Bernard Parks in Torrance, Hawthorne, Lomita, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach or one of the others? If Hahn indeed gets tossed out this week, somebody in Rancho Palos Verdes should try to get him to move there and run for office.

One of our small town mayors recently lamented to me in private that he got into politics to make real change in the world, and that all he ever found himself doing was arguing over setbacks and parking requirements. He longed to tackle the weightier issues that just never came up in his jurisdiction. So he did what he could and toiled in relative obscurity. He's the kind of guy who makes sure the street looks good in Lomita. Unfortunately for him, that was all he was ever able to do.

(March 8, 2005)

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