Craig Greiwe Meet and Greet in Venice                                           ...back>
Mar. 30, 2022 - Craig Greiwe, running for Mayor as an outsider, spoke at a meet and greet in Venice where he outlined some of his detailed plans for solving Los Angeles' problems.  Before speaking, he did a short interview:

QUESTION:  Why are you the best candidate for Mayor?

GREIWE:  There's a very clear, differentiating factor in this race between every other leading candidate and me, which is the fact that they have been at the seat of power for 30 years. Unelected or elected, they have been at the seat of power making decisions in the city for 30 years, and their decisions are on our streets. We cannot trust the people who have continued to make empty promise after empty promise and let the city fall into ruins to suddenly develop a conscience and fix L.A..

I am the only true outsider with the experience and with the plans necessary to move this city forward—concrete plans that are proven to work across this country to drive our solutions in homelessness, affordability, crime, corruption, jobs and innovation.

I am the only true outsider with experience and expertise and the ability to bring people together to move Los Angeles forward, for us to break from the past, break from this cycle of institutional corruption and people using this office for their own personal ambition, to have a mayor that actually wants to be mayor of the people, by the people, and for the people.


QUESTION:  You mention concrete plans. Obviously you can have a beautiful plan on paper, but do you have the skills to implement the plan?


GREIWE:  Yeah, so I have spent my life implementing difficult plans at companies and challenges many times larger than the size of Los Angeles. So my skill set, my 20 years in business, has been focused on doing just that. And these aren't just any plans. These are plans that have been exhaustively culled together from solutions that work elsewhere across America multiple times over. So it's like, it's not like we're reinventing the wheel here. The rest of America is making significant progress in eradicating homelessness, but rather than model that what's working elsewhere, Los Angeles is choosing to double down on what's not working here.


QUESTION:  So what are one or two cities you've studied that are doing a good job?


GREIWE:  The website Community Solutions, one of the nationally recognized nonprofits, that is leading the way on this, has full map listing that includes Bergen County, New Jersey, Abilene, Texas, Lake County, Illinois, Fremont County, Colorado. Colorado as a state is more than halfway there. There are 14 cities that have moved to some form of functional zero homelessness. There are 58 more than a more than halfway there. There are 98 that are working towards functional zero homelessness using proven solutions.


QUESTION:  Give us a sense of how you're conducting your campaign. When did you launch, and what are you doing now to get your message out?


GREIWE:  I launched late last year. The first four weeks of my campaign were Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's, so it wasn't a great time to grab people's attention [but] it was the right time for the campaign. We have spent our time since the new year building a coalition of individuals across the city—business leaders, community leaders, civic leaders, outside the party infrastructure—who are fueling our campaign, who are throwing events, who are bringing people together. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or 100 people, it's bringing our campaign's message directly to those people, raising the money necessary to run the campaigns to bring that message directly to the people of L.A..

Because the exclusion that's happening is election suppression and election manipulation pure and simple. The institutionalists in this city want to control not just who the public votes for but who they can even hear from because they fear that a candidate from the outside catches fire is their worst nightmare.


QUESTION: 
Anything else that you're doing to get your message to a broader audience?

GREIWE:  Yeah, I mean, certainly we're doing everything that a campaign would be expected to do from door knocking and phone banking and volunteering, walking neighborhoods, phone calls, text messages, advertising campaigns, everything. The only thing that we are not doing are the things that other people control—the debates that they refuse to let us in, and when press coverage refuses to mention us. Everything else we're conducting as a normal campaign. The good news for us is that the people of the city don't read the LA Times so I don't have to worry that much about it.


QUESTION:  Is there anything you've learned? You've never run for office before. is there like I were deciding I want to do this next time around is there one, one or two lessons you've learned?


GREIWE:  I think that I've always known that elections are not just about ideas. They're about the campaigns, they're about the outreach and engagement. I think it is important for anyone who's thinking about running for office in Los Angeles not to underestimate the vehement passion of those in power to cling to power, and to be prepared to have to do everything to counter that.

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