Carpetbagging the 45th

Kevin De Leon, the new Assemblymember for the 45th district just north and east of downtown, had his district swearing-in ceremony this week. Reports back estimate attendance at forty.

To put that in perspective, Assemblymember Mike Eng's swearing-in was attended by somewhere around a thousand.

What a difference actually living in the district makes!

Not that De Leon doesn't have a residential address in the district somewhere. Surely getting one was high on his to-do list at the very outset of his campaign, somewhere between setting up a state PAC account and finding a good mail consultant.

But if you listen to former 45th Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg, there's apparently a difference between running for a seat in a community you've never had a relationship with because the Speaker is your boyhood friend and can twist a lot of arms to get you the right endorsements, and actually sharing a history with the constituents you're running to represent. Go figure.

Goldberg, by the way, endorsed Elena Popp to succeed her. But as beloved as Jackie is in the 45th (and she is, and for very good reason), she ain't the Speaker of the Assembly, and can't more or less instruct the big organizations where to put their campaign cash.

And as the California Nurses Association never tired of reminding us this election cycle, big money controls elections. So even though De Leon was trailing badly at the beginning of the race, once those independent expenditures started kicking in, out went the whole "relationship with the community" crap (who needs it!) and in came the unearned votes. And thus the 45th District inherited an Assemblymember nobody's ever heard of, let alone trusts.

Except maybe those forty people who bothered to show up to his swearing-in ceremony (I wonder how many of them live in the district?). Hopefully the new Assemblymember took notice of the fact that however wrapped up he might have things in Sacramento, being the Speaker's BFF and all, he has a lot of work to do back here in L.A.