Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn is locked in a surprisingly close race in the special election for California’s 36th District. The special election is Tuesday, as in 5 days from now.
Back in the early part of the last decade, America, and especially California, was living high on a speculative real estate bubble. Local and state governments were absolutely awash in tax receipts and felt, you know, we can probably afford just about any crazy idea you can come up with. Councilwoman Hahn became a cheerleader for just about the craziest idea since we decided to turn food into fuel; paying gang members to be ‘gang intervention specialists.’ What could go wrong?
As the above local news report shows, quite a lot, actually. Supporting this program was a dumb move. But, hey, politicians were on something of a spending bender back then, so maybe we can just chalk it up to a ‘youthful indiscretion.’ Dumber, though, and harder to explain away, was Hahn walking out of an interview when first confronted about the program in 2008.
Dumbest of all, though, is Hahn firing up her lawyers to go after the news organization reporting on the story. These Clarence Darrows actually tried to use a “Cease and Desist” threat against a news station…over a news story. This isn’t just dumb, this is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad-day kind of dumb.
Now, the 36th is a Democrat district and I can’t overstate that this is in California. Still, this has to be beyond the pale even for California voters. Again, the special election is Tuesday. Gangsta Hahn’s opponent can be found here.
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