A new TV ad supporting Kevin James' campaign for mayor will start running tomorrow, making him the third candidate with a spot on the airwaves.

The ad is the second one in a week to raise the specter of bankruptcy. This one contends that the three City Hall veterans in the race — Wendy Greuel, Eric Garcetti, and Jan Perry — cannot fix the city's budget crisis because they created it.

“Only Kevin James can solve our problems, because only Kevin James did not cause them,” the narrator says.

James doesn't have enough money in the bank to run his own TV ads. Instead, he's relying on Fred Davis, the Republican consultant who formed the Better Way L.A. Committee to back his candidacy. Davis has reported raising $700,000 so far, almost all of it from Harold Simmons, a right-wing Texas billionaire.

Davis is believed to have booked at least $350,000 worth of TV time in the coming week to air this 30-second spot:

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Unlike Garcetti and Greuel — who also have spots on the air — James is being introduced to voters with an entirely negative message. The only argument in his favor in this ad is that he's not Garcetti, Greuel or Perry. That same argument works just as well for Emanuel Pleitez, the “other” outsider candidate.

The other ad that mentions bankruptcy came out last week from Working Californians, the IBEW-funded group supporting Greuel. And wouldn't you know, that one says that only Greuel “has what it takes to clean up the mess at City Hall.”
One other note about Richard Riordan's prediction that the city would go bankrupt in two years. That's out of date. The last time we talked to Riordan, in December, he was predicting that bankruptcy might arrive in 2017 — a three-year postponement of his earlier prediction.

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