Spotlight on a Candidate – Mitchell Schwartz for Mayor of LA

The CA Obama team’s ACTUAL boss!

Mitchell Schwartz is one of the finest men we know.  He has spent a lifetime fighting for social justice and the environment and has been instrumental in inspiring young activists to get involved and serve.

While Mitchell could have led with an iron fist which is what many did in his shoes, he chose to empower every one who came thru our doors.

Mitchell’s platform

Fix the Housing Crisis:
• Establish transparency by removing political money from development decisions
• Create a “housing czar” to coordinate efforts across departments holding them accountable for results.
• Update general plan and all community plans within four years while establishing neighborhood dialogues with community leaders, city planners and developers.
• Review impact fees, borrowing costs, and other expenses developers face
• Review incentive programs for creating housing for working families and improve the effectiveness of the density bonus program.
• Streamline city and state regulation & establish a public/private task force to identify unnecessary, duplicative, and overly cumbersome city regulations.
• Encourage innovation, new ideas, and new technologies to solve the crisis.
• Make the private and nonprofit sectors full partners in the housing effort.

Establish a DWP Owners’ Bill of Rights
• Create an Elected Board of Commissioners, giving Los Angeles residents the accountable leadership they deserve.
• Develop a Citizen Oversight Committee, providing residents with a truly independent ratepayer advocate who will directly communicate with DWP customers about their service.
• Improve transparency, by demanding a rapid response to public requests for information.
Restore Trust in City Hall
My pledge to the people of Los Angeles:
• I will not accept campaign contributions from any Political Action Committees.
• I will not accept any campaign contributions from developers.
• I will shut down my campaign fundraising committee until January 2021 at the earliest.
• I will immediately shut down the Mayor’s Fund.
• I will serve the full 2017-2022 term without campaigning at all for a higher office.

While we are deeply disappointed in Obama’s endorsement, we are all aware of the political payback involved in that endorsement and that Obama hasn’t a clue what is actually happening in our city.

Garcetti has tapped out all the developers he can draw from and has moved his fundraising efforts out of state.  Says a lot about his relationship to the people of this City.  He is also pretending that there aren’t any of other candidates running and doesn’t believe that voters are entitled to any debates.  What do you think?

Members of our team were active supporters of Eric after the campaign and even worked on his behalf post inauguration.   Not sure if it was always there but we noticed the problem right after the election.  It started with the rapid and increasing number of crony decisions and support of developers as well as the massive increase in contributions from those same developers to both the “Mayors fund” and his campaign war chest funding.  Then the out of control development began leading to over 40 community groups filing lawsuits in his district.  His former Chief of Staff Mitch O’Farrell actually upped the ante  sanctioning more and more opposed projects while smiling and telling constituents that all would be fine.

His deplorable behavior during the Mayors race began by his lying about his support from then POTUS Obama, which led to pitting Obama organizers against each other with a smear campaign unrivaled in LA politics against a smart, capable and progressive female candidate.  Instead of arguing the merits of the policy positions Garcetti sanctioned and emboldened the duped organizers on their smear campaign and rewarded their dirty deeds with staff appointments.  Hundreds of supporters were placed into positions they were completely unqualified for ensuring political “loyalty”.  Anyone who did not support him was ostracized; a large majority being non-profits whose sole purpose was to better people lives.

Many of the “initiatives” or edicts coming out of the Mayor’s office under his tenure, while sounding fabulous have never materialized or actually been implemented.  Street repairs, infrastructure priorities, technology updates, transparency, staff responsiveness.  Even the commercial that is currently being aired claims credit for giving yet another tax break to the film industry with no change in conduct requirements for community’s which is what pushed them out in the first place.

The saddest part is this City is in desperate need of real leadership driven by a desire to make things better and not to fund a race for an office not held or even available yet.   Among the long list, standing up to the unreasonable demands of certain unions in the City, completely retooling planning and taking politics out the department.  Reigning in the DWP, establishing a land use policy that rewards affordable housing developers and recognizing that the Mayor serves us not us him.