Saturday, June 9, 20
Trutanich's Downfall
It is hard to pinpoint precisely what caused DA wannabe City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to crash and burn at the polls in Tuesday's primary election. Former supporter and political activist Zuma Dogg offers his thoughtful analysis. [WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE]
Trutanich lost the election by a crushing margin, not only wiping out any hope he had to 'win this thing in the primary,' but also removing him from what many believed would be the lead position in a runoff election.
Trutanich lost a shot at the runoff by the narrowest of margins to second-placed DA candidate Assistant Head Deputy Alan Jackson. That margin that could perhaps have gone the other way but for many factors. Certainly, it appears that the efforts of Zuma Dogg to repay Trutanich for betraying a promise may have help to tip the balance.
According to Dogg, Trutanich promised Dogg a job at the City Attorney's office in reward for Dogg's efforts to help Trutanich become City Attorney in 2009. Trutanich never followed through on that promise and stopped accepting calls from Dogg, explaining away Dogg's anti-Trutanich position as 'sour grapes.'
'Sour grapes' or not, it seems that Zuma Dogg joins a long line of community activists who remain committed to ensuring that the public learn more about Trutanich's character than any amount of expensively produced campaign videos, mailers and tv ads can overcome.
ORIGINAL POST ON L.A. DRAGNET
ZUMA DOGG UPDATE: During Trutanich's '09 campaign for City Attorney, I pushed hard the entire campaign, from before ANYONE reading this EVER heard of Trutanich. And most of you reading this met him/heard about him, for the first time, from Zuma Dogg. I did what I did, because Villaraigosa's puppet Jack Weiss had to be defeated, and Trutanich said a bunch of stuff, that he completely did 180's on, as soon as he got into office. So, I guess I learned a lesson regarding endorsing politicians. OR, maybe I just got burnt by the worst example of a human being, in political history. Toward the end of the campaign, last couple weeks, if not the last week of the campaign, I called "Nuch" on his cell phone, on night, to update him on some media things, and advised him to make a call to a radio station, that was talking about the election, at that moment. Trutanich burst out into, "Zuma Dogg, you are too good. If I win the election, I'm going to give you a job." I appreciated that he was fired up and pleased by the world-class strategy of ZD. I continued to push, as I had been, for the final week, or so, of the six months of relentless radio, TV and blog support of Trutanich. I did what I did, because that's what I do...but of course it was ANNOYING when he didn't invite me to the victory lunch and never followed up on a job, even if it was washing his car and taking his suits to the cleaners. IT WAS JUST TOO EASY TO SAY IT...AND TOO EASY TO SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, regarding sour grapes issue: Had the only issue with Trutanich been a personal issue with ZD, and I had gone to town on alerting the people what a liar and loser he was, just because of my personal beef, I would have lost the credibiltity you know I have worked so hard to maintain over the years. And when we look back, in retrospect, not only was I right about Trutanich...THE ENTIRE MEDIA GLOBESPHERE SEEMED TO HAVE AGREED.
AND, nice of Joe Friday to highllight my efforts -- and I DO feel, based on the thin margin Trutanich missed the run-off by, "THE ZUMA DOGG FACTOR," made a 100% difference...BUT, of COURSE, without Joe Friday...TRUTANICH WOULD BE IN THE RUN-OFF, FOR CERTAIN, AS WELL. The FOX-11 COVERAGE that was generate off L.A. Dragnet blog, alone, made the difference. OF COURSE John & Ken, LA Weekly's DEVASTATING "Trutanich The Barbarian" article, L.A. Times (and Steve Lopez) -- and everyone else brought Trutanich ALL THE WAY DOWN to a low enough margin, that the bloggers end up making the final difference.
IT DOES TAKE A 100% FOCUSED EFFORT OF ALL OF US TO DEFEAT THE SHADY IN THESE ELECTIONS, due to the built in union/office support officials (or a ballot measure) has, to DEFEAT them. And when you add it all up, quantum physics take over (Aka: karma), and the CLOWN loses being in the run-off by 1%. LOL! Gotta LOVE quantum principals of the universe!
