Walter Moore’s Biography

Moore was born in 1959, and grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, attending public schools.  As a teenager, Moore worked a variety of jobs, including fixing bicycles, cleaning motel rooms, cooking breakfast at a fast-food restaurant, bagging groceries, and busing tables at a restaurant.  Moore was on his high school debate team, was the copy editor of the school newspaper, and won a variety of debating and academic awards.

In 1977, Moore started attending Princeton University on a scholarship, where he majored in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.  Moore worked his way through college.  After working as a file clerk in the library as a freshman, he landed jobs as a research assistant for:  the Florida Department of Education; a Princeton economist studying health care issues; and a midwestern public policy “think tank” studying energy conservation. 

Moore was on Princeton’s debate team, and ran the program during his senior year.  He received various awards for debating and public speaking, and an award from the Woodrow Wilson School as the “Outstanding Participant” in his junior-year policy conference on industrial policies.  (One of Moore’s classmates in that policy conference, by the way, was Eliott Spitzer, who used to be the governor of New York.)

In 1984, Moore graduated from Georgetown Law with honors, moved to Los Angeles, passed the bar exam, and started practicing law as a business trial lawyer, which is his occupation today.  Moore is with Richard Hamlin Attorneys in Westchester. 

Moore has represented individuals, partnerships and public and private corporations in business disputes in state and federal courts in a wide variety of industries including advertising, aviation, banking, computers, construction, energy, entertainment, real estate and telecommunications. 

Moore has handled cases involving fraud, breach of contract, copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, employment discrimination, premises liability, breach of fiduciary duty, legal malpractice, securities law, unfair competition, and other subjects.

In 2005, Moore ran for Mayor, but did not try to raise money for advertising; he’s not making that mistake this time.

From 2006 to the present, Moore has written or co-written the official ballot arguments against the following ballot measures: 

1. •Measure H (2006) would have increased taxes to fund subsidies for developers.  Voters rejected that measure.
   

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3. •Proposition S (2008) was the tax hike on cell phone service that Villaraigosa misleadingly presented to voters as a tax cut.  Moore established an opposition website.  Prop S passed, but over 239,000 people voted against it. 
   

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5. •Proposition A (2008) was Council Member Janice Hahn’s proposal to raise property taxes to fund anti-gang programs.  Moore set up a website, GangTax.com, to explain why voters should oppose it. That measure failed to get the two-thirds majority required for tax hikes. 
   

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7. •Measure A (March 3, 2009) would create a new bureaucracy to investigate discrimination claims in the Fire Department, even though we already pay for a small army of deputy mayors, lawyers and risk managers to do that now. To defeat this and other measures, Moore set up VoteNoLA.com.
   

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9. •Measure E (March 3, 2009) would authorize City Hall to keep giving hundreds of millions of tax dollars per year to subsidize politically connected businesses.  Moore’s website, VoteNoLA.com, explains why voters should reject this proposal.
   

Moore also opposes Measure B, the solar proposal, but did not write or sign the official ballot argument against it.  Moore’s arguments against Measure B, and supporting materials, are set forth at VoteNoLA.com.

In 2008, Moore wrote Jamiel’s Law, and by December 5, 2008, over 76,000 people had signed petitions to put it on the ballot.  Jamiel’s Law would create a narrow exception to L.A.’s “sanctuary city” policies, to let our police enforce immigration laws against documented gang members without having to wait to catch them committing additional crimes like murder, extortion and drug sales.

From 2006 to the present, Moore has served as a member of one of the City’s Historic Preservation Overlay Zone Boards.  His wife is the former president of their neighborhood’s homeowners’ association. Mrs. Moore, having worked in the aviation and garment industries, now manages the family’s income property, which is located in the South of France. The Moores have three dogs, all “rescues.”

The Mayoral election will take place on March 3, 2009.