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Herb Wesson Pulls Well Away From the Pack

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Category: Community News

Published on Thursday, 10 March 2011 20:22

Written by Dianne Lawrence

In 2007 Herb J. Wesson ran unopposed in CD10. In 2011 six candidates, unhappy with what they were seeing or not seeing in District 10, came forward to challenge the incumbent. Yet try as they might, they were unable to combine their votes to force Councilman Wesson into a run off.

Their criticisms of what they perceived were Wesson’s shortcomings; an inability to articulate a vision for CD10, unresponsivenss and inability to make a substantive connection with the whole of his district, did not seem to outweigh a Councilman who has not made any glaring public missteps and enjoys the goodwill of many. So without making any campaign promises, Councilman Wesson was voted back in with the highest percentage of the returning City Hall incumbents, nearly 74%.

The lack of experience, an inability to come close to Wesson’s financing, an inability to develop any of the endorsements needed to pose a serious challenge, weak campaign agenda’s, hamstrung the passionate and serious efforts of the opponents.  Councilman Wesson had a total of $236,367 in campaign contributions making the amounts raised by the challengers look like small change at best. Chris Brown had an impressive $20,000, Andrew Kim came in third with $17,085, Austin Dragon, $7,769, Althea Rae Shaw, $7,185, Luis Montoya, $1,796 and write in candidate Gavin Glynn had heart but no cash. Wesson also garnered endorsements from LA Weekly and the LA Times who pointed to his popularity at City Hall, ability to run effective committee meetings and the unchallenging opponents, as the reason to re-elect. Interestingly, nothing was said about his work representing CD10.

As we previously reported, it is very difficult to unseat an incumbent and true to form  nobody at City Hall was replaced this election cycle although Bernard Parks in neighboring Council District 8 had to sweat it out as the vote counting went into overtime. He had a close call and a tough challenge by Forescee Hogan-Rowles but ultimately prevailed with just 51.21% of the vote.

Because of local forums and local media attention it was possibly the most watched election our community has experienced since Councilman Wesson came to the district and he was feeling the pressure as his campaign tactics took an aggressive turn. The Neighborhood News received letters and phone calls from residents complaining about the frantic and repetitive campaign phone calls. Vicki Jackson from Harvard Heights wrote “I called his actual office and told them to stop the harassing phone calls- as many as 4-5 per day-every day! I continued to receive them until I called a second time and told them to stop or I was filing a harassment charge with the police dept.”.  We also received a report of Wesson’s crew stapling posters over other candidates posters. Here is a

photo of a Wesson poster stapled over Candidate Chris Brown’s poster. But in the end, he had little to worry about as he slid into an easy victory.

CD10 has 98,000 registered voters. 11,122 of them showed up to vote. Thanks to the challengers, it was a 25% jump up from the last election.

Herb J. Wesson Jr.  8,212 votes (about as many as he received in the last election) counting for 73.84% of the votes taken.

Andrew Kim came in second with 1,190 votes indicating that all may not be so rosy for Wesson in Koreatown.

Althea Rae Shaw, despite name recognition and a passionate albeit one-focused cause, racked up only 574 votes.

Luis Montoya promised to address the ballooning budget and make the city’s business policy more friendly but his youth and lack of experience worked against him and he gained only 449 votes

Chris Brown’s promises to cut his salary in half, raise funds for schools through an innovative e-waste program, strong media push and promise to make CD10 more accessible weren’t enough to convince voters to put their mark next to his name. 417 votes.

Austin Dragon’s numbers were surprising. He received some support in the media but ran a lackluster campaign garnering him only 280 votes.

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