Wednesday, March 07, 2007

No Pumpkin Bread Love Here, or Low Voter Turn Out

In yesterday's election, Councilman Tom LaBonge of Council District 4 (CD4) received the least number of votes (of confidence) than any other unopposed candidate. Even Wesson and Parks who have lower percentages of registered voters had a greater turnout for them.

Out of 112,250 registered voters in CD4, only 6,968 voted in yesterday's election (6.21%). But, only 5,823 actually voted for the unopposed incumbent. Over 1100 voters (about 16%) did not vote for the Councilman. Less than 1000 voters in his Valley District alone cast their ballot for him out of the 17,500 registered voters in that area (Board of Education District 3). Does this mean Tom is vulnerable? The man is all over the City and is one of the City's greatest boosters. He's even The City Nerd Award winner. What's not to like?

The election results aren't pretty - only about 7.7% of registered voters cast a ballot yesterday. That means just over 109,500 votes were cast out of a city of 4 million people. So, actually, just over 2.5% of the City's residents participated in our democratic process.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was an election?

Don said...

I caught a little bit of Tom LaBonge on CityTV this morning. That guy's a hoot. If he were running unopposed in my district, I might break my general rule of not voting in uncontested elections.

Anonymous said...

Ok, Tom LaBonge WAS a GOOD GUY up until the Tennie Pierce fiasco. My sisters knew him growing up at Marshall High School. Now he's sold out and he's doing what is expedient. Why didn't I vote him and the rest of CD4? He didn't DESERVE the vote! CLUE: It was a vote of NO CONFIDENCE! Tom, you put out a nice calendar, but before you run for mayor, pull your head out of your ass and stand up for what's right instead of the political expediency of what's easy and politically correct!

Will Campbell said...

My LaBeef with LaBonge is narrowly focused on the fact that he's two-faced about bikes in Los Angeles. In front of the camera he's all gung-ho (as he is about almost anything), but then can't do more than muster up a few hours of one solitary night that they're not banned from rolling through the LADWP Festival of Lights. On top of that he's totally supportive of continuing the mountain bike ban in Griffith Park, and showed absolutely and repeatedly no interest in the pilot program I proposed that would bring a volunteer mountain bike group together to work in conjunction with the park's rangers. I don't need a loaf of pumpkin bread from him, I can get it myself.