I hope this memo finds you happily lounging on your Amity Island porch, safely distanced from large bodies of water or oversized carnivores. 

If so, ignore this. But if you have any itch to serve the public again as only you can, then please move to Los Angeles and run for mayor.

Why? Because LA hungers for your peculiar brand of pathological optimism in the face of certain carnage.

I know what the critics say. They point to your 1975 mayoral record, as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg film Jaws. They say you ignored the experts. They say you failed to warn the public. They say you let a Great White shark turn a picturesque New England summer into a buffet to protect your town’s tourism economy. 

None of that matters anymore. Transparent lying is now the foundation of the American system of government. That you’re a movie character is hardly disqualifying, since you’re no more fictional than the civic leadership in LA.

In the City of Angels, irresponsibly defiant behavior is the political norm.

Indeed, LA politics is unified by collective denial of existential threats. The mayor and her challengers, the labor and business establishments, never stop pretending that all problems are manageable.  Neighborhoods may burn in fire cyclones, but LA’s most powerful people won’t add emergency capacity to meet combustive threats. AI and monopolistic tech companies may threaten the city’s signature industry, but LA responds  with  ineffective production tax breaks. 

And when the federal government sends masked agents to abduct foreign-looking people on the street, our leaders bring in even more feds to “protect” LA during major international events.

Now, you might ask, why does LA need Mayor Larry Vaughn when our politicians already have their heads in the sand?

Because our people are tiring of our homegrown hacks. Mayor Karen Bass is politically dead, unable to crack 30% in election polls. Her challenger on the left, Nithya Raman offers a center-left program indistinguishable from Bass’.  And Spencer Pratt, a reality TV villain running on a MAGA-style platform, is an even more cartoonish character than you are.

The question for you, of course, is why LA? I know you have other options. You’re still popular — Jaws showed more box office bite during its 50th anniversary re-release last year than most new Hollywood features. And you have fans among some of the world’s most irresponsible  officials. 

“The real hero of Jaws is the mayor, a wonderful politician,”  Boris Johnson argued while running for London’s top office. “A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beach open.”

But LA is your best opportunity to utilize your unique expertise — upbeat defiance in the face of danger and disaster. Ultimately, LA will benefit, too. By letting all the sharks devour Los Angeles, you can give the city the chance to be born again.

Like Amity Island, Los Angeles desperately needs tourists to show up — in our case, to pay for the multibillion-dollar Olympics and World Cup. The city government, in an act of criminal foolishness, has signed a deal that says if the Games go bust, the city treasury — already facing a $1 billion deficit and billions more in underfunded retirement costs — will pick up the tab. 

But the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric — travel bans, aggressive vetting, threats to bring ICE and the military out to the Games — will visitors. Who wants to fly halfway across the world to attend a sporting event in a city where a fascist government is hunting people? 

That’s where you come in. You, by declaring that the Games and World Cup will be fine and that people should come to LA anyway, will seal the deal. Everyone knows what you did in Jaws (and its sequel). They’d be crazy to show up!

The Games will lose billions. This shark of Olympic debt will eat the city alive, triggering municipal bankruptcy and governmental meltdown

This Olympics-inspired governmental meltdown would be a feature, not a bug.

Our current city government is a failure, producing non-stop corruption while failing to fix street lights or sidewalks. Bankruptcy could inspire the dissolution of a municipal mess, forcing  LA city to merge with more competent LA County to create a powerful regional government.

Such a government might have the capacity to provide great services, house people, fix infrastructure — and meet 21st century threats.

In this movie, you wouldn’t just be the mayor who let the shark in. You’d be the mayor who bankrupts us into the future. You’d be the hero. 

So come to Los Angeles, Mr. Mayor. Help us ignore the fins in the water. 

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square, and is founder-publisher of Democracy Local.