District 2 council race shifting gears

from The Daily News
by Rick Orlov

With less than two weeks remaining, the 2nd City Council District election has turned into a contest of who is the outsider.

In mailings, in robo-calls, in attacks on one another, businesswoman Chris Essel and Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank, have sought to portray each other as the "insider" who cannot be trusted.

To Krekorian, Essel is the "downtown special interest" candidate who has received endorsements from a number of City Council members, city employee unions and Controller Wendy Greuel, who was the council member of the district until her election last March.

To Essel, Krekorian is the Sacramento political insider - he is Assembly assistant majority leader - who has brought the state to the brink of bankruptcy and is a "career politician" who has jumped from the Burbank school board to the Assembly and is now looking to be on the City Council.

"I'm a private citizen who has volunteered my time," Essel said. "I'm not the one who has been in office. He is the assistant majority leader, who is backed by the Assembly speaker and all the Democratic Party machine."

Krekorian, whose Assembly district includes such areas as Valley Glen, counters that Essel has been a part of city government because of her commission appointments and the backing she is getting from city leaders.

"She is the insider," Krekorian said. "I might be in elected office, but she has been appointed to powerful commissions by three mayors.

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