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Mike Davis For District 9 - Experience Makes Difference

Evie Liu |
March 4, 2013 | 10:55 a.m. PST

Staff reporter

Mike Davis, former State Assemblyman for District 48th, is running for the seat of Los Angeles City Council District 9th, where USC campus is located.
Mike Davis, former State Assemblyman for District 48th, is running for the seat of Los Angeles City Council District 9th, where USC campus is located.

Mike Davis is proud that his campaign office is located right on Broadway Street, with local small businesses as his neighbors. He believes the most important thing for his campaign is to be connected with residents.

“Our campaign is really about ‘people first,’" he said, while sitting on a chair right outside his office, watching people passing by in the warm morning sunshine. "We hope people can walk in and talk about issues and get involved. This is the core value of what we are doing.” 

Inside the office, several volunteers are busy calling people on their list to remind them to vote on March 5th. “This is the 53rd page,” said Hezibidiah Dollar, a volunteer from Fremont College. She has been helping with Davis for a month. She said they will keep making phone calls in the last few days to make a final effort. 

Davis is an experienced politician with more than 25 years of work experience in District 9. He has served as the District Director for Congresswoman Maxine Waters and the Senior Deputy for L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Burke, both of whom's offices were located in this constituency. Also, as the former Assemblyman for District 48 in the past six years, Davis said he knows this community better than any other candidates, since the Assembly District 48 is to a great extend identical to District 9.

In this election, every candidate tries to find their root and connection with this community and each one has different approach. Some claimed they were born here, some said they grew up here, some suggested they are from humble background, some emphasized they are minority group. But for Mike Davis, these are all meaningless: “Yes, I am happy that you are born here, but the constituency wants to know what you have done for us lately.”

He is confident about what he has done in this area in his past 20 years - a lot of legislations including education funding, real estate fraud protection, judicial diversity, etc.

Julianne Burg is a political science student at Mount St. Mary’s College. She is a supporter and also a volunteer for Mike Davis. What she likes about Davis is his effort to clean up the streets and provide more productive youth programs in South L.A., which is especially important for Burg who has spent all her childhood and teenage time in this area.

Davis believes his rich work experience in South L.A. would be the biggest advantage for him in this election. He does not feel threatened by grassroot candidates like Ron Gochez and Manuel Aldana, who criticized experienced politicians as corrupt and responsible for previous problems. “Sometimes they are lucky, but most times that success never happens because people know the difference,” he made an analogy about going to hospital, “When you make your choices to go to the doctors, if you will do surgery, do you want someone with no experience or someone who is experienced to handle it? I would suggest that public policy for our community is no different from going to a doctor.”

He mentioned another candidate Terry Hara who also has 30 years work experience in police department in District 9th, but Davis doesn't think a police officer can handle the tasks in public policy field, in which he is confident to be the best one in this race, as printed on his flyer: “the only candidate with 26 years of experience in addressing and solving problems for residents in District 9”. 

“The voters deserve to know who has had work experience specifically for their community when there was not an attractive council seat available. And I am that man,” said Davis, implying some of the fellow candidates as “Johnny who comes lately” who get involved in this community just for a seat in City Council.

“He has a history with the community,” said Robert Cold, the campaign manager for Davis, “He did not just move to the district for another position.” Dermot Damian Givens, an old friend of Davis, agrees with Cold. Givens knew Davis back in the '90s: “He is not running to be an elected official, he is running because he has been in this community for 20 years and I knew it. This was his area. The other people can’t say that.” As an attorney, Givens now worked as the campaign consultant for Davis. Having talked to several candidates in this race, Givens believes that Davis is going to win the election: “My goal is to help him run a good campaign, so he can take advantage of all this assets and his community ties.”

Davis said the reason he is running for office is to “complete the cycle” of his involvement in government, since he has worked in three of four government levels - federal, state and county - except the city level. He also believes his experience on the other three government levels will help him bringing more resources to the city and being more effective in solving local problem, “You need to know what level of responsibility each government has. I know who to call, who should be able to assist us.”

For Davis, the top three priority issues in District 9 are public service, public safety and economic development.

He wants to clean the alleys, repair the sidewalks, trim the trees and improve the district's infrastructure, as well as providing ample amount of police officers to the streets. According to him, L.A. lags behind other cities in terms of police representation in the community. He said, for example, New York City has more police officers than Los Angeles.

“We deserve it, too," said Davis. "We can’t have a police officer on every corner, but at the same time, we can’t have only one representative district dean.”  

Yet, for all the proposals he has, there would be a funding problem. Davis thinks the responsibility of an electable official is to not only have great ideas, but have funding for those ideas, “We have to identify revenue for ideas we have.” He gave one example of where to find money to fund the things we need - a bill he proposed and passed last year to end the 25-year to-life sentences of minor offenders in California, which would return an annually $100 million expense on jail back to the government.

Instead of cutting public service, Davis finds it more crucial to find new revenue. That’s also why he is the only candidate that expressed publicly supporting the Proposition A of sales tax increase. But at the same time, he said he also has concern about overtaxing and is open to investigate the impact of the proposition, what the money is used for and try to find other funding as well. But anyway, his attitude is tough and clear: “I am not for displacing 9,500 officers on the street. I don’t want to compromise, we must have public safety in our community. If this does not work, I will find other funding.” 

Mike Davis' campaign office on Broadway.
Mike Davis' campaign office on Broadway.

As for the economic development in District 9th, on the one hand, Davis plans to work with financial institution on community reinvestment to bring more job opportunities to South L.A.; on the other hand, he wants to keep the vibrant small business community as it is today. These two wishes, in his eyes, are not in conflict.

“We must have a healthy mix,” said Davis, coming up with the idea of an environment where both big corporations and small businesses could survive and thrive, and even support each other. “There does not have to be an environment of competition and corporations don’t have to be a threat to small businesses,” said Davis, proposing the concept of “supplier diversity”, which means

Receiving his masters in Leadership from the USC School of Public Policy and Planning, Davis is also a proud Trojan - the only one among the seven candidates. He said the USC education has taught him how to keep an open mind while making decisions and solving problems, which, according to him, has given him “a cutting edge of difference” against his other opponents.  He wants to encourage small businesses to work with big corporations so that both of them can benefit from it. “If I have an accountant down the street, who has got her accounting degree and certified by the state, she could do the job as any accountant in Beverly Hills, why not use her?” said Davis, giving example industries like accounting, law consulting, catering, etc.

In the last few days before the election, Davis said he and his campaign staff will keep calling people and sending their message out. “We are not knocking on doors for the first time. After 20 years of service in this community, we are going to come back and say hello again. We are going to be reconnecting.”

“It has always been in his life - caring about people and getting people connected to government service,” said Givens, Davis’ campaign consultant. Robert Cold also described Davis as a “people’s person” who always likes to help his people, “Sometimes people from Assembly District 48th still come and ask for issues. Even though in campaign, he (Davis) would just stop it and call to address those issues.” 

Davis said while his opponents are talking about what people haven’t done, he will talk about what he has done and what his future plan is. He believes the best way to tell the qualification of a candidate is to check his past record, “We hope our work will speak for us,” said Davis with a confident smile.

Reach reporter Evie Liu here or follow her on Twitter @Evie_xing.



 

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