In his new ad Kevin James says corruption is a way of life in City Hall, and he singles out Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, two of his leading opponents in the mayor's race.
Greuel is now the city controller and wants to move up to the mayor's office. She is second in the latest Eyewitness News poll. She says the James ad is false and she comes close to calling it a lie.
"I think it's just a desperate attempt at distracting from the voters," Greuel said. "We want to talk about the issues in the city of Los Angeles."
Garcetti has a similar take on the latest attack ad. The former city council president says it's the last week of the mayoral campaign so it's no surprise his opponents are distorting the truth. Garcetti leads in most of the recent polls.
"I will never apologize for making sure the city did not go bankrupt," he said. "In times of emergency, you don't want to have secondary projects going when core services are being cut. So we absolutely made sure the core services were protected as much as possible."
But James isn't backing down a bit. In his new ad, he accuses Garcetti and Greuel of doing the dirty work at City Hall outside the public eye.
"This ad is a very creative way of demonstrating the serious problems that we've had in City Hall," said James.
And in public he frequently refers to a University of Illinois study as a basis for his corruption allegation.
"That study is available online, it's University of Illinois. It does talk about corruption in the city of L.A. in the last 10 years is No. 1. And that's the reason Angelenos need to know that it's time for new leadership," James said.
The 2012 study ranked cities and regions for corruption and called Los Angeles the second most corrupt city in the country, behind Chicago. It also points out that the ranking has a lot to do with the huge population.
