Joe Buscaino’s Fundraising, Poll Numbers Get Attention from City Hall

Joe Buscaino was feeling good this morning as he greeted me at his campaign office in San Pedro.

Before we even sat down, he brought up reporter Rick Orlov’s column in today’s Daily News. It’s the column that said Buscaino is leading in the polls and could upset the race that many insiders expected to come down to Assemblyman Warren Furutani, D-Gardena, and firefighter Pat McOsker, who until recently was the president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City.

“That is quite humbling,” he said. “I’m not calling this a campaign anymore. I’m calling it a movement.”

It’s the kind of cliché one would expect from a man running in his first election. The political novice, however, has caught people’s attention with his fundraising and poll numbers. When the Ethics Commission posted campaign finance reports last month, Buscaino came in second place with $103,000. The current fundraising period will close on Oct. 22.

Buscaino, 37, is a senior lead officer who has painted himself as the City Hall outsider with deep ties to San Pedro. He likes to point out that both he and wife grew up in San Pedro and have been lifelong residents.

“Being a resident is somewhat like a marriage – in good times and in bad times, in sickness and in health … I didn’t have to move in to run for office,” Buscaino said, a dig at some of his opponents who did move into CD15 just before filing their papers.

Buscaino, who entered the LAPD’s Police Academy in November 1996, first thought about running for city council at the end of 2009 when then-City Councilwoman Janice Hahn announced her run for lieutenant governor. His extracurricular activities, which include the Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro YWCA’s Racial Justice Committee, Mary Star of the Sea Parish and the Los Angeles Watts Summer Games, also paint a picture of someone who had leadership on the brain.

But, for all the talk of being an outsider, Buscaino’s views are not out of step with what’s happening in City Hall. He supports the new local preference ordinance and efforts to eliminate the gross receipts tax. He says he will back Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s public safety initiatives. And, while he acknowledges that the Port of Los Angeles could be in trouble when the Panama Canal widening project is completed, he has yet to develop a concrete plan on how to keep imports coming through L.A.

“With the widening of the Panama Canal, we need to ensure that we remain competitive and viable because there are other ports on the southern Gulf coast that are biting at the chance to get those containers,” he said.

If elected as the new councilman for the Fifteenth District, Buscaino said his first priority would be to develop a code enforcement system similar to the LAPD’s COMPSTAT. This would cut down on illegal vending, abandoned vehicles and noise issues, he said.

“We here in this district have failed when it comes to code enforcement,” Buscaino said.

Buscaino is one of 11 candidates running for the CD15 seat. The primary is set for Nov. 8

Catch Joe Buscaino’s recent interview with Off the Presses.