LA advocates help elect City Attorney
May 20th, 2009 | by Don Duncan |Medical cannabis patients and advocates helped elect Carmen Trutanich as the new City Attorney on Tuesday, but the results in the District 5 City Council race are still too close to call. Paul Koretz appears to be the likely winner in that contest, but with only a few hundred votes separating him from his opponent, the provisional ballots will decide the outcome. The Los Angeles medical cannabis community threw its growing grassroots weight behind Koretz and Trutanich in hopes of steering the city towards a more reasonable medical cannabis policy.
City Attorney Elect Trutanich with GLACA members
The Greater Los Angeles Caregivers Alliance (GLACA), which is working to develop and implement sensible regulations for medical cannabis collectives and cooperatives, helped call voters, walk precincts, and turn out hundreds of members to elect the two candidates. GLACA members joined City Councilmembers Zine and Hahn in Universal City on Tuesday night to celebrate Trutanich’s victory, while a delegation of medical cannabis advocates gathered in central Los Angeles to watch the neck-and-neck race with Koretz.
The election of Trutanich – and possibly Koretz – is good news for medical cannabis supporters. Paul Koretz is the former Mayor of West Hollywood and California Assemblymember who has been a long-time champion of medical cannabis rights. He is likely to replace medical cannabis opponent Jack Weiss as the representative for District 5 – which will mean one more vote for safe access on the City Council.
Carmen Trutanich defeated outgoing Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss in the race for City Attorney following a surprisingly negative campaign. Patients and advocates feared Weiss would carry on outgoing City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s policy of obstructing progress on implementing sensible medical cannabis policy in the city. Trutanich told GLACA members he would uphold the state’s laws at a neighborhood meeting before the election.
Neighborhood groups and media have been critical of the City Council and City Attorney’s office for not moving quickly enough to regulate the exploding number of patients’ associations in Los Angeles. Having another medical cannabis supporter on the City Council and a more reasonable City Attorney could be important as the city begins the work of adopting a permanent ordinance in earnest this summer.
Congratulations to GLACA, the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, and dozens of patients’ associations who helped make a difference!
Tags: cannabis community, caregivers alliance, carmen trutanich, city attorney, dennis zine, glaca, jack weiss, los angeles city council, paul koretz
By susan on Apr 5, 2010
Just came across this now, some 11 months later, and it sure seems ironic to see this celebration in light of Trutanich and his mentor Cooley’s war on medical marijuana – AND very specifically, against Don Duncan as detailed in the L A Weekly article recently by Dennis Romero.
On top of his throwing Laura Chick under the bus and the whole controller issue, here’s another major case where he actively courted people and their money then made them Public Enemies Number one. Why does the Times refuse to point out this major flaw in character, from someone who was elected to enforce the laws fairly and ethically? He ran a nasty campaign whose veracity about himself and opponent both brought his own ethics into question to many (as did his consultant John Shallman’s campaign for Essel and against Paul Krekorian). The Weekly’s article seems to pointedly sidestep this issue too. This and the other cases of seemingly arbitrary “Obey or else” enforcement, combined with making allegations against people of vague criminal conduct to hold as a club but then being unable to back it up (like with AEG’s Liewike), added to his refusing to take any cut of his staff or personal salary “because I made more in private practice,” should make the public and media look closely at this now sad-seeming photo op “victory” as representing much more than just this issue. Since he wants to become DA in Cooley’s place, we can’t just ignore such behavior and reward him for it.