To All,

It feels like just yesterday that our broad coalition of neighborhoods campaigned hard, won a huge reelection victory, and renewed our commitment to move Los Angeles forward, do good, and get things done. But — believe it or not — there is a group of people who refuse to respect the will of the voters, and are now trying to engineer a costly and wasteful special recall election to remove me from office.

We need to gear up and fight this. Can I count on your endorsement of our effort to push back and Reject the Recall?

Earlier this year, hundreds of us spent months knocking on doors, talking with voters, and winning a 71% mandate in March for a positive agenda for our city and for our neighborhoods. But last month, a group of five proponents — led by the very challengers we defeated earlier this year — took the first steps to try to overturn that election and remove me as your representative. It is an insult to the voters, an abuse of the electoral process, and a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars.

When I ran for office, I promised you that we would accomplish a lot together, that I would be accessible and always listen, and that I would be unafraid to lead. I have taken on some of our toughest issues — such as homelessness and a horrible epidemic of traffic fatalities in our neighborhoods — and I have proposed bold and sometimes controversial solutions. Sometimes I’ll get it right, and sometimes I’ll get it wrong and correct course — but I will never be reluctant to tackle our most serious and intractable problems.

But if I am going to continue to do that, I’ll need your help. Can you join me and our friends in Rejecting the Recall?

The people behind this recall are well-funded and they have their own agendas. They care more about those agendas than about the great things we have accomplished together: building mass transit, creating and preserving open space, adding LAFD resources to Westside neighborhoods, deploying more cops for neighborhood policing, modernizing LAX without expanding into nearby neighborhoods, fighting for more affordable housing, charting a course to renewable energy, or raising the minimum wage. They don’t care as much about all the streets we’ve paved, the trash we’ve picked up, the parks we’ve all the streets we’ve paved, the trash we’ve picked up, the parks we’ve cleand, and the people we’ve helped.

But I know you care about those things.  And I know you care about all the things we still need to do together.  Please stand with me and Reject the Recall.  Thank you so much for your partnership and your support.

Warm Regards,

MIKE