With the Los Angeles city elections a few weeks away, a small group of students listened to four of the 10 officially balloted mayoral candidates speak as part of a panel discussion Tuesday.
The student-run forum featured lesser known candidates David Hernandez, Phil Jennerjahn and Craig Rubin, as well as write-in candidate Stevan Torres.
Torres’ name does not appear on the ballot and must be written in by voters on the city elections day March 3.
The candidates attempted to publicize their views and win voters to upset incumbent Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The event was co-sponsored by the UCLA chapter of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and Phi Alpha Delta, a pre-law professional fraternity.
Candidate discussion was moderated by third-year political science and English student Negar Tehrani, chapter president of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, and Kia Makarechi, a third-year English student and executive vice president of Phi Alpha Delta.
Both students moderating the discussion are Daily Bruin Viewpoint columnists.
“This is the first time we’ve hosted this,” Tehrani said. “The debate team told us about (the panel), and we jumped on it.”
At Covel Commons, the panel of candidates spoke to an audience of 20 people, many of whom were members of the host organizations.
“We wanted a low-key town hall event, versus a highly impersonal event,” Makarechi said.
“We wanted it to be more personal, to get to know (the candidates’) platforms and their personalities,” Tehrani added.
The forum revolved around a set of 10 questions, all of which were compiled by members of both organizations.
With the current fiscal budget crisis in California, the discussion focused on the candidates’ ideas for Los Angeles’ economic plan.
Torres said the next mayor needed to make city hall more cost-efficient and cited Villaraigosa’s current “That’s So L.A.” ad campaign, which advertises services in Los Angeles around the city, as an unnecessary use of funds.
“”˜That’s So L.A.’ is so stupid,” he said. “We need to save money.”
Both Rubin and Hernandez took similar positions on the issue, saying that there was no accountability in the current city government, which led to the budget problems.
Rubin also insisted that Los Angeles stop wasting money and focus on creating more jobs.
Despite the immediacy of the issue, Jennerjahn chose not to answer the question, based on a concern for time constraints. Jennerjahn said he and several other candidates needed to attend another event after the panel discussion.
He further declined answering several more questions by the moderators.
When discussion turned to the passage of Proposition 8, the four candidates had slightly varied responses.
Jennerjahn, who identified himself as a conservative, expressed strong approval of the measure, saying, “I voted yes on 8. I’d do it again.”
Although Rubin also voted yes on the proposition, he said that it was due to a belief that the government did not have a responsibility to regulate marriages and that this responsibility belonged to the church.
Hernandez said he understands the issues faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
He said he had many gay friends, but as mayor, he would uphold the status quo.
“As the mayor of Los Angeles, it is my responsibility to uphold the charter, whatever result it has,” he said. “(My responsibility) is to uphold the law.”
Torres immediately declared himself a “strong proponent of gay rights,” and he said that the mayor should be a tolerant leader of the city.
“I would not want to be involved with taking away anyone’s rights,” he said. “I voted no ““ discrimination of any kind is just wrong.”
Toward the end of the event, the conversation turned toward the candidates’ ideas on how to increase the job opportunities of graduating college students.
Torres proposed a program for scouting businesses, which would work in conjunction with city hall. With this program, the city would attempt to bring “the best companies” back to Los Angeles to create more business opportunities.
He also said that as mayor, he would support lowering the drinking age to 18 to make Los Angeles the “tourist capital of the world.”
Hernandez took a different stance on the issue and said that the jobs were already in Los Angeles, but that these jobs needed qualified workers.
Rubin, a 1993 UCLA alumnus, drew upon his college experiences to answer the question.
“I studied economics at UCLA and didn’t understand how to make money until I grew pot,” he said.
From there, he argued that Los Angeles needed to create wealth and bring jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors back to the city.
“When we own the means of production, we bring wealth to Los Angeles,” he said.
Jennerjahn also chose not to answer the question.
At the conclusion of the event, both moderators believed that the panel discussion was a success.
“I would have liked to see certain candidates answer more questions, but I appreciated the candidates’ flexibility on the issues,” Makarechi said.
However, students commented on the briefness of the panel discussion.
“I’m sad that I didn’t get to ask any questions,” said third-year international development studies student Hyun Oh.
Oh added that the event allowed him to learn more about the mayoral elections and helped him to become more involved.
“I’m not really into the mayor elections. I’m more into national elections, but (the event) got me into it,” Oh said. “I got a chance to learn a lot about the standings, ideas and goals of the candidates.”
This educational aspect was one of the primary objectives of the panel.
“(We wanted) to familiarize students and faculty … with the candidates,” Tehrani said.
“Particularly since we are students and many of us are residents of Los Angeles, it’s important to know a candidate’s position before we vote for them and the impact they will have on our future.”