Secession Watch Archive
Archive Oct. 21 - Oct. 30
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• The San Francisco Chronicle wraps up the Valley secession campaign by leading with a Pacoima computer trainer who opposes secession, then follows with quotes from more opponents: councilman Jack Weiss, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and Tony Lucente of the Studio City Residents Association. Deep in the story, Richard Close of SFV Independence appears along with candidate Oscar Mendoza. The story is by James Sterngold, newly ensconced as the Chronicle's man in Los Angeles after leaving the New York Times.
• California Secretary of State Bill Jones predicts in a Sacramento Bee story that higher interest in the Valley secession issue will push voter turnout up next week. He is forecasting 58% turnout statewide, higher in the Valley. Oddly, the San Jose Mercury also quotes Jones saying that a hot local issue like Valley secession will get voters out, but headlines the story as bad news on turnout. Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters, meanwhile, agrees that Valley secession will raise the turnout.
• Trash and whether a separate Valley city would send its refuse into Los Angeles is the lede of the Wednesday campaign roundup in the L.A. Times. In the story, Mayor Jim Hahn announces that he opposes expanding the Bradley landfill in Sun Valley, one of several dumps located in the Valley. Also covered: A complaint by SFV Independence over a $5,000 anti-secession contribution from the late council president John Ferraro; a new more positive TV ad from the anti side; and final-week efforts by the secession side in the Valley and Hollywood. No campaign story in the Daily News, but there is an Op-ed piece calling secession a new start for the Valley by Pepperdine professor of economics Charles D. Van Eaton.
11th district race, with lede at Krispy Kreme
• The L.A. Times roundup for Tuesday covers a secession debate at USC, Bob Hertzberg's plans for pushing his boroughs idea after the election, the use of e-mail by the pro secession forces and direct mail by the anti side, and a complaint filed by council candidate Frank Sheftel over the city's sponsorship of the senior citizen event last weekend in Lake Balboa. The Daily News devotes an entire story to the Sheftel complaint and to others about city hall's use of public funds to fight secession.
USC Daily Trojan covers the debate
LAT: 10th district race
• Mayor candidate Mel Wilson proposed a list of new business policies that would include reducing the gross receipts tax by 25%, phasing out noisy aircraft at Van Nuys Airport and streamlining the processes for obtaining various permits. The Daily News has the story.
• The Daily News editorial page makes recommendations on candidates in each of the council districts.
• The L.A. Times seems to be running a secession feature each day as the election nears, possibly clearing out a backlog of assigned stories. Today's is a look at the Valley Girl phenomenon of the early 1980s and how it endures in the culture's image of the Valley. Almost half the story is actually about the use of the word "like" in speech around the country.
• The Washington Post, in likely its final look before Nov. 5, reports that Valley secession "appears doomed" (and bumps the story off Page One). The analysis by Rene Sanchez is that the break-up "seemed remarkably close to coming true" some months ago, but that the voters' minds have been changed by the costly anti-secession campaign. Council president Alex Padilla lends credence to the theory, saying that once voters learned the risks and unknowns they decided firmly against seceding. The photo with the story is of anti-cityhood volunteers.
Earlier in WaPo: Booth on Hahn lucky campaign falters, Sanchez on Secession jihad
• The San Fernando Valley Business Journal is out and on-line with its final pre-election secession package. The lineup includes stories on how passage might affect business in the Valley, on how business is divided on the merits of secession, on break-up leader Laurette Healey and others pondering how the campaign might have gone differently with more money. Most of the stories require a $3 fee. Registered site visitors, though, can view free a Voter's Guide and an article by Jacqueline Fox on media coverage that quotes Secession Watch and has an amused observation from Valley business leader Fred Gaines, who was interviewed by European television: "It’s a little bizarre to think that people back in Austria are going to see me on TV with my mouth moving and someone speaking in German over me about Valley secession." Also free, editor Michael Hart explains why the SFVBJ won't take sides and offers competing, tongue-in-cheeks lists of the top 10 things that could happen if secession wins or loses. An example if it wins: "Jeff Brain’s birthday becomes an official school holiday." If it loses: "Brentwood homeowners host 'welcome home' party for city tree trimmers."
• The Angels' triumph in the World Series is bringing some ancillary fame to the San Fernando Valley. Stories about series star Troy Glaus that cite his Valley ties have been posted on news Web sites in Minnesota, South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and in the U.K. The Angels' Garrett Anderson and Brad Fullmer also played their high school ball in the Valley -- and the late team owner Gene Autry lived for many decades in Studio City, where he became famous as the singing cowboy in films from Republic Pictures, on the lot where CBS is now. And think of this: if Disneyland had been built in Burbank rather than Anaheim, as Walt Disney originally wanted, the World Series title might be coming home to the Valley today.
The Valley does have a team -- in The Dreyfus Affair
• A Ventura Star article on Valley secession contains the intriguing suggestion that a separate Valley city would not only be the 6th most populous U.S. municipality, but also would be the second most affluent big city. Only San Francisco has a higher per-capita income, the paper says. The factoid is unsourced and confusing though, because it limits the ranking to cities of one million or more. But San Francisco has nowhere close to a million residents -- it's not even as large as San Jose.
• Keith Richman gets the mayoral endorsement of the Daily News, which says that the physician and moderate Republican assemblyman "offers the best hope for a bright future in an independent San Fernando Valley." The endorsement says Richman's experience in government makes him preferable to Democrat Mel Wilson, the only two candidates it believes have "the basic qualifications." Says the paper: "This isn't a job for neophytes or ideologues." Also, the paper follows up its Sunday endorsement of Valley secession by urging Valley voters to support the Hollywood break-up.
Signal: Richman for Assembly
• Secession Sketchbook returns to the pages of the L.A. Times with a visit to a meeting of the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council. Most of the participants said informally that they back secession.
• The Daily News' James Nash writes that while most voters have made up their mind about secession, they are mostly at a loss on the candidates running for Valley mayor and council offices. The story follows the 11th district candidates as they make the rounds meeting voters. Only one of the hopefuls has spent even $1,000 to become known to the voters. A point about the story: like many DN articles of the past few days, it repeats the SurveyUSA finding that the Valley is leaning in favor of secession. That's a bit misleading used on its own, given that the less-controversial L.A. Times Poll found the Valley slightly opposing secession.
• The Daily News' top story Sunday switches to the long view - what happens after Nov. 5 in the Valley and in Los Angeles. Although the lede treats the election outcome as up in the air, most of the quotes assume that secession loses. And the news there is that former L.A. mayor hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa says he will back a plan for dividing Los Angeles governance into boroughs. (Though not mentioned, he also is believed to be considering a run for L.A. City Council next year in the district of incumbent Nick Pacheco.) The story doesn't touch the threat by secession leader Richard Close (reported in the L.A. Business Journal) to sue if the Valley votes for secession and instead focuses on whether Hahn would sue. The best perspective on future relations between Valley and city comes from professor Tom Hogen-Esch of Cal State Northridge: "This tension between the center and the periphery will not go away...It's a permanent fixture of politics in Los Angeles. The discussion may shift for a while to decentralization, to boroughs and neighborhood councils. But on the issue of secession, I can easily see us having this same conversation in 15 or 20 years."
• Valley council candidate Tamara Trank has found a way to stand out from the other hopefuls -- in an L.A. Times story Sunday, she discusses her position against secession. In a walk through the 1st district with a reporter, Trank's stance causes some confusion.
• Although Saturday's Lake Balboa gathering was billed as a city-sponsored event to honor seniors, secession opponent Bobbi Fiedler used her remarks to argue against the break-up. Secessionists were not amused. They showed up to dog Mayor Jim Hahn at every step and there was even a scuffle during his address that led to council candidate Glenn Bailey accusing a Hahn deputy of battery. Daily News and Times reports.
• The Times' Sunday Opinion section runs a piece from Valley journalist David DeVoss that doesn't actually state a position for or against secession, but that mouths the break-up party line across the board. The central point is that the Valley's unhappiness will continue after Nov. 5: "Hahn's disingenuous anti-secession campaign has laid the foundation for continuing discontent." DeVoss last surfaced as an early signer of the secession campaign's "Valley Declaration of Independence."
• Book News: On Sunday at 4 p.m. -- before the 7th game of the World Series -- San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb author and Secession Watch editor Kevin Roderick will speak and sign books at CSUN's Oviatt Library. There'll be some mention of secession, more on the Valley's history and image -- and everyone will be home in time to see the Angels whup the Giants.
• The Daily News makes it official and endorses Valley secession in Sunday's editions. It is the first time the paper's editorial page, despite years of pushing the cause, has actually called for a yes vote on dividing the city. Until now, the paper says Sunday with a straight face, "when we said we were undecided, we meant it." But, it explains in a lengthy editorial, "every possible vehicle for genuine reform has been exhausted. Every vehicle, that is, except for secession." It advises that to vote yes, "Valley voters must be prepared to take the largest leap of faith of their political lives: voting for secession and accepting the risks it entails." The paper also endorses choosing the name "San Fernando Valley" over the other four choices on the Nov. 5 ballot. The endorsements are matched with a Patrick O'Connor cartoon depicting City Hall, the LAPD and other entities as famous movie monsters, while a frightened citizen proclaims, "Secession isn't so scary once you consider the alternatives!" The editorial is silent on Hollywood secession. Also in Sunday's paper, a 10-page Voters Guide all on secession with a history and timeline of the break-up movement, capsules on every candidate and a reprint of the "truth boxes" the Daily News has been running the past two weeks.
• In the lead story of Monday's Los Angeles Business Journal, Howard Fine pores over the various challenges envisioned (free on-line) by secession supporters if the Valley votes for break-up while the city's voters do not. Secession leader Richard Close all but promises a lawsuit to determine the constitutionality of the state law that let L.A. voters share in the secession decision. Most interviewed don't give a challenge on those grounds much chance.
• An Associated Press story on the weekend wires has porn stars musing a little about Valley secession and adding to the list of joke names that are out there. "San Pornando Valley" and "Pornopolis" don't have quite the ring of Jay Leno's earlier "Pornadelphia." Says "Dee," an actor on a Chatsworth porn set: "It has to be Pornoville. That's what everybody calls it already."
• The Daily News takes a look at Jerry Perenchio, the reclusive TV mogul of eclectic political tastes who is the biggest contributor of funds to defeat secession. Perenchio and his Univision TV network have donated $519,000 in cash, free ads and services to the anti campaign. He wouldn't talk about his motives. He is a major contributor to the Republican Party and to Gov. Gray Davis, supported school vouchers and also gave $1.5 million to fight Prop. 227, the anti-bilingual education measure a few years ago.
• Mayoral candidate Mel Wilson introduced several ethnic community leaders who endorsed him for the job, should it exist. The endorsers include the heads of the Valley NAACP branch and the Valley's Filipino Chamber of Commerce.
Daily News: Schools issue, redux
The final "truth" box: charter vs. general law
• Secession supporters plan to confront Mayor Jim Hahn when he appears Saturday morning at a Lake Balboa event for seniors, they tell the Daily News. They contend the city-sponsored fair is an anti-secession event in disguise.
• Staffers and volunteers at secession headquarters are few in number but resolute in their belief in the cause, the L.A. Times' Sue Fox found in doing a feature for Saturday's paper. The grass roots army that break-up proponents predicted would rise up out of the neighborhoods never quite materialized. But there's enough activity -- supportive letters, small checks, new volunteers -- that the true believers can feel hope as they soldier on.
• The Tidings, the Los Angeles Catholic newspaper, covers the Valley secession debate that was held last week at Mount St. Mary's College and aired on KPCC-FM. The participants included former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan and Valley VOTE chairman Richard Close.
• Reporter Wendy Madnick of the Jewish Journal weighs in with a report on why many in the Valley business community support secession.
• New fundraising reports (the last before the election) show that the anti-secession side raised more cash in the first three weeks of October than the pro side has collected during its entire campaign. Mayor Jim Hahn's L.A. United took in $781,000 in the period, pushing its total to about $5.5 million. Other anti-secession committees run by city officials have taken in another $1 million. The SFV Independence Committee, the main pro-secession arm, has managed to collect just $609,364. The L.A. Times story says the break-up campaign owes $100,000 (including $52,000 to Goddard Claussen, the campaign advice firm that quit last month), while the Daily News story categorizes the debt as $24,000 more than the committee has left in cash. The LAT story also reports on a debate Thursday that matched SFV Independence co-chair Richard Katz against an old political nemesis, state Sen. Richard Alarcon.
DN: Property taxes
LAT: 6th CD race
• The LA Weekly, in its election recommendations, dismisses the secession movement as a dangerous "last gasp of the old Valley" and offers a write-in nomination for Measure G, where Valley voters get to choose a name for the new city: White Flight Heights. The rant is near the bottom of a long column of endorsements.
• The computerized SurveyUSA poll for KABC-TV finds Valley secession losing 57%-40% citywide but holding steady within the Valley, the Daily News and Times report. Self-described "likely voters" in the Valley went for secession 58%-39%, about the same as in previous SurveyUSA polls. The stories also report on the controversy that typically surrounds SurveyUSA because of the way it gathers voter opinions. Unlike the L.A. Times Poll and most other major surveys, which are conducted over the phone by live poll-takers who ask a battery of sometimes-detailed questions, the SurveyUSA polls are filled out electronically. People who answer their phones listen to brief recorded questions and punch in their responses. The last L.A. Times Poll found Measure F trailing slightly in the Valley and falling 56%-27% citywide. In less than two weeks we find out which method came closest to the right call this time. Today's LAT story ledes with the fears among secessionists about retribution from City Hall after the election.
Rent control truth, as the DN sees it
5th district race, as the LAT sees it
• "Secession 101," the information series produced by The Civic Forum, will be re-run in its entirety on LA Channel 36 (cable only in L.A. city) beginning next Monday, Oct. 28. From then until Election Day on Nov. 5, the half-hour programs will run in rotation daily from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Also, a final one-hour wrap-up will air each night at 10 p.m. That final episode includes 30 minutes of discussion between host Ken Bernstein, Richard Katz of SFV Independence and Rusty Hammer of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, and an evaluation of the campaigns by a panel that includes Secession Watch. That's 54 hours of secession programming over nine days.
• Culture Watch: Proving how far the Valley has come from the Brady Bunch era, a new NBC comedy series called "The Ortegas" will be set in the San Fernando Valley home of an upper-middle-class Mexican-American family. Comedian Al Madrigal has been selected to play the lead character of Luis. The show is based on a hit British comedy, "The Kumars at No. 42," about a family of Indian immigrants.
• His rival candidates for Valley mayor are beginning to gang up on probable frontrunner Keith Richman, the L.A. Times reports. It's a healthy development since it means the race is starting to look like a real political campaign.
• The one municipal function where a new city could make a rapid and certain impact is in planning and land use, the Daily News says in a long report. The story touches on a host of hot button issues, from the Sunshine Canyon landfill to the proposed flooding of acreage in Sepulveda Basin. It has Bob Scott, the deposed secessionist planning commissioner, pointing a finger at City Hall for various transgressions, but the story offers voters no help in deciding if they are in synch with the break-up movement on key development issues: who among the candidates are for slow growth, who favors denser growth, who is for or against favoring horses over new building in Chatsworth, does anyone have a good alternative plan for Ahmanson Ranch, any thoughts pro or con on Porter Ranch's march up the slopes of the Santa Susana Mountains, or on making Ventura Boulevard more built up. And so on...
Today's issue reviews: Rent control and social services
• If secession leaders seem a little more uptight at Thursday's luncheon debate at Town Hall Los Angeles, they're to be excused. The event is in the Valley, at the Sheraton Universal hotel, but the moderator is the strong secession critic Fernando Guerra of Loyola Marymount's Center for the Study of Los Angeles. Most of the events so far have been moderated by someone less outspoken.
• The L.A. Independent, the free weekly seen mostly in Hollywood and on the West Side, comes out opposed to both secession campaigns. The paper has been covering Hollywood more closely, but includes the Valley movement in its position: "We must reject the simplistic solution."
• "Life & Times" on KCET Channel 28 will devote a special prime-time broadcast to secession on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. Both the Valley and Hollywood secession measures will be topics on the show, to be hosted by regular hosts Jess Marlow and Val Zavala.
• KPCC-FM (89.3) plans to broadcast one last debate on Valley secession next week. The debate itself will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Monarch Hall at Valley College. The public is invited to attend for free and ask questions. It will be broadcast the following morning at 9 a.m. on "Larry Mantle's Airtalk." Mantle will moderate the debate between Jeff Brain of Valley VOTE and Bill Powers of the United Chambers of Commerce for the Yes side, and Larry Levine of ONE Los Angeles and former city councilman Mike Feuer for the No side.
• Wired News has posted a story on mayoral candidate Marc Strassman and his campaign based on universal access to high-speed Internet connections and other technology. The story says that Strassman has been preaching his form of e-government for 26 years. The Strassman for Mayor Web site has more.
• L.A. City Councilman Nate Holden will soon be termed out of office in his Mid-city district and looking for a job -- which must explain why he showed up at Galpin Ford Monday night to make nice with secession activists. Holden has never been too particular about living in the areas he seeks to represent. The Daily News campaign roundup also covers a bunch of disparate items: Valley Independence kicks off its final grass-roots push, liberal council candidates endorse Mel Wilson for Valley mayor, and the Alliance for a New Los Angeles vows to continue the secession fight after Nov. 5 with key players that include African American activists Zedar Broadous and Robert Farrell, the former L.A. councilman, and activists from the Harbor area and Westchester. The L.A. Times roundup covers much the same ground, but notes that several of the Alliance figures didn't show at Monday's event. Also, Mayor Hahn will speak to VICA in December. In a separate story, the Daily News goes back over the police and fire issues, without any apparent news to report.
And: The DN "truth" on business taxes
LAT goes to District 3, in Valley papers only
Zahniser: Alliance prospects dim
• In the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes asks in a piece headlined "Los Angeles Unbound" whether the secession movement is a fizzle or a slow-burning fuse. You have to be a subscriber to read it on-line. The issue, by the way, features Arnold Schwarzenegger and the cover line "Muscular Republicanism."
• The Election 2002 package from United Press International includes an e-mail Q-and-A interview between Secession Watch editor Kevin Roderick and UPI national correspondent Steve Sailer, a resident of the Valley.
• David Zahniser in the Daily Breeze looks at the financial contributors to the anti-secession campaign who live outside the city of Los Angeles in the South Bay area.
• Even if secession had a chance coming down to the wire, the overly long and daunting ballot measure "sealed its doom," former break-up advisor Arnold Steinberg tells the L.A. Times. "I would have fought this ballot language, taken it to court, and if I lost there I would have walked away from [the secession effort]," he says. Others agree. One run-on sentence totals 199 words. Side note in the story: writer and policy analyst Joel Kotkin, frequently quoted in stories on secession, says he will vote for dissolving this civic marriage.
Full text of Measure F on Valley secession
LAT does the 2nd District race
• New asphalt, trees, street lights, a crosswalk -- the benefits to Pacoima of the City Hall effort to block secession, or the fruits of many years' labors to turn things around? The Daily News' Susan Abram explores this question. The DN also revisits the unknowns on water and power rates under cityhood. The story's lede makes it sound definite that rates in the Valley must be the same as in L.A., but deeper in the story the remaining uncertainties pop up.
DN's The Truth About Local control and City finances
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