Where the hell is Stevie Kaufman when you really need him?
As Ron reported a couple days ago, Stevie, an attorney who specializes in campaign and fund-raising law, represents just about every Democratic politician from San Diego to Sacramento – including Mayor Antonio.
According to Fox 11’s John Schwada, a one-time ink-stained wretch who thought he was too good looking for print, Antonio and his girlfriend Lu Parker, a former beauty queen turned TV reporter who is without doubt way too good looking for print, are sitting courtside in $2,000 seats at Lakers playoff games for free.
The story angle was that the tickets are not reported on the mayor’s gift disclosure forms, and that if they’re a gift of Staples Center he can’t legally accept them (or any gift) because arena owner AEG lobbies the city and get subsidies so big they could solve the financial problems of all the hundreds of thousands of people Antonio’s policies have sent to the unemployment line.
The mayor told Schwada that at the last game he was a guest of his “friend” Jeffrey Katzenberg, and insists that because he’s at the game in an “official capacity” as mayor the tickets don’t have to be reported as gifts.
Holy pooper-scooper! An official capacity? Did he play? Referee? Sing the national anthem?
I can only guess Antonio was answering on the basis of Stevie’s legal advice that he could bring his honey to game and sit courtside without having to dig deep into his own pocket (ouch!), or, better yet, use his Officeholder Account, if there’s anything in there. Under state rules that would be a bad dog’s trick, but in LA, you can use the dough for virtually anything – except campaigning.
I also wonder if the Dog Trainer has failed to notice his honor holding court courtside? Before it was decimated by layoffs of half its staff, the city’s paper of record like to think it didn’t miss such dirty tricks. Now, we need a TV reporter to tell us what’s going on.
Six years ago when the Dog Trainer was eviscerating Fleishman Hilliard’s relationship with the DWP and the office of Mayor James “Never Touch Me or Call Me Jimmy” Hahn, the Dog Trainer put a team of reporters on the job to find out if the DWP was secretly paying for Hahn’s seats behind the Dodgers dugout.
Steve Lopez, famous for “The Soloist” movie about a homeless bum with musical talent and being the highest paid writer in town, the staff had great fun with some emails the Dog Trainer obtained between Fleishman Hilliard GM Doug Dowie and Jimmy’s press secretary Julie Wong in which they tried to control the inquiry by keeping the less-than-bright interim DWP GM Frank Salas away from the press.
“If Salas isn’t allowed to talk to reporters,” Lopez wrote in July 2004, “and he needs $3 million a year worth of strategic counsel and the like, why not get rid of him, the executive staff and the 23-person PR staff at DWP and let Dowie run the place?”
Given what’s happened at the DWP in the last six years, that might not have been a bad idea.
The DWP has become the utility of ill repute with a new GM every year and Dowie got in a lot of trouble in what became a criminal case involving over-billing the DWP. He, by the way, is still available to run the DWP as he waits while the case drags through the appeal process..
Nothing ever came of the Dodger ticket issue or Laura Chick’s original pay-for-play accusations.
Nowadays Dowie will be the first guy to tell you he had a lot faults, but he was no dummy about the law. After all, he was getting legal advice from Stevie Kaufman just like the mayor..
Woof!!