Saturday Politics: L.A. Mayoral Race Heating Up

Garcetti (left), Greuel (center) and Yarosalvsky (right) are
statistically tied in a poll of voter preferences for L.A. Mayor

The Los Angeles Times reported on the upcoming March 2013 primary election to become the next Mayor of Los Angeles earlier this week by discussing the results of a poll of the presumptive and announced candidates. Former Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Los Angeles City Councilmember Jan Perry and former investment banker Austin Beutner are the names most people are discussing to replace current mayor Antonio Villaraigosa when he is termed out in July 2013.

The poll of 1605 randomly selected Angelenos (with roughly equal numbers of "Whites," "Blacks," "Asians" and "Latinos") was conducted February 1 to March 2, 2012 by Loyola Marymount University's Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles has some interesting results:

The first feature which jumps out the viewer is the whopping 65.75% who respond they do not know who they prefer to be mayor. Of the remaining 34.25% who did have a response, the results are: 22.19% Garcetti, 21.74% Greuel, 19.11% Yaroslavsky, 17.06% Perry all closely lumped together. In fact, if you consider the margin of error of the poll is ±2.89 percentage points the four are essentially statistically tied.

Another curious feature of the race to be Mayor is that Yaroslavsky has not even announced that he is actually running. The three current and former councilmembers (Greuel, Garcetti and Perry) have been officially or unofficially running for the better part of a year (if not longer). The thing is, it is unlikely that any political types in Los Angeles will be able to focus on the Mayoral race until after the federal elections are decided in November, meaning that it will basically be a 4-month sprint to the finish from November 7th 2012 to March 5, 2013.