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Will City Attorney Carmen Trutanich Honor His Pledge to Voters?

9:56 AM PST on December 5, 2011

City Attorney Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich promised when running for City Attorney that he would not seek political office while working for the city. In fact, he signed a very specific pledge with repercussions if the contract with voters was broken. Here's what he signed a couple of years ago when running against Jack Weiss:

We pledge that we will not seek any other elected position including Mayor, U.S. Congress, Attorney General or Los Angeles County District Attorney while serving as Los Angeles City Attorney. By signing this pledge, candidates also agree to a penalty should they violate the terms and conditions outlined above. Such penalty will be a $100,000 fine payable from personal funds to LA’s Best After School Program.

In addition, violators agree to personally finance one (1) full-page newspaper advertisement in every daily newspaper in Los Angeles to be run on the first Sunday following the breach of this contract. Such ad must include a large headshot of the candidate in question, a copy of this pledge and the words, “I AM A LIAR”, in large block print.

It's now been a few months since Trutanich announced he is running for District Attorney, but no donation to an LA Afterschool program has been announced, and the daily newspapers are still waiting for that full-page ad. In case the issue is finding a graphic designer, we've graciously included a version above that could be used, for a nominal fee, by the Trutanich for D.A. team.

The campaign of Alan Jackson, who is running against Trutanich, is trying to get the word out about the broken pledge, but it appears not many people are listening other than the blog LA Dragnet which some in that blog's comments have suggested is run by Alan's campaign anyway.

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