SMRR backs three new faces in SMC race
OCEAN PARK — Members of the most powerful group in local politics abandoned a long-time advocate Sunday and endorsed two incumbents and two challengers in the race for four open seats on the Santa Monica City Council this November.
With some 300 people packed in the auditorium at Olympic High School on Lincoln Boulevard, members of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights voted to endorse Mayor Richard Bloom and City Councilman Ken Genser for re-election, and overwhelmingly supported challengers Patricia Hoffman, a former school board member, and Pico neighborhood activist Maria Loya for the other two seats.
A dejected City Councilman Mike Feinstein, backed by SMRR in his past two elections, said he would run even without the important endorsement.
“When an independent thinker who asks hard political questions is punished by political insiders, something is deeply wrong,” said Feinstein, who received one-third of the votes. “The election is up to the voters, and not SMRR. As I have previously when I’ve been among the top vote getters, I will place myself before the residents of this community and ask for their support.
“I believe the individual community sense that I bring to the City Council will continue to resonate with Santa Monicans.”
SMRR endorsements are considered crucial in local elections. They translate into $60,000 to $80,000 worth of election mailers and untold thousands more in door-to-door campaigning from SMRR backers. The powerful renters group has endorsed a majority of City Council candidates during 19 of the 26 years of its existence.
Feinstein lost the party’s backing because many members viewed him as stubborn and not willing to play by the rules, said SMRR co-founder Denny Zane, who distributed a flier before the convention urging a vote for the other four candidates. Among the examples that Zane cited were the councilman’s actions to support a non-SMRR candidate in 2002, his ongoing dispute with the Green Party over tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, and what Zane’s pamphlet describes as “disgraceful” conduct earlier this year regarding a controversial school funding measure.
SMRR bylaws require candidates to obtain 55 percent of votes to receive an endorsement; consequently, voting at the convention took two rounds. Only Hoffman and Loya qualified for an endorsement after the first 239 ballots were counted. After the second round of votes, Bloom and Genser pulled away to obtain the other two endorsements, each netting more than twice Feinstein’s votes.
Backers of both Feinstein and Loya employed an election tactic called “bullet voting,” where only one candidate is checked on each ballot, in order to keep as low as possible the number of votes any competitor receives. Loya’s 43 bullet votes were enough to qualify her for an endorsement in the first round. Feinstein’s 26 were not. City Councilman Ken Genser narrowly missed an endorsement in the first round of voting by netting 128 votes — or four less than were required for SMRR backing. That compared to 164 total first-round votes for Loya, 143 for Hoffman, 111 for Bloom and 82 for Feinstein, according to unofficial tallies.
Before the second vote, Hoffman took the microphone to thank SMRR members for her endorsement and offer advice on how to vote in the second round.
“I don’t want to be on the council without Ken and Richard,” she said. “Michael, I love you too, but I need to be with these guys now.”
A total of 212 ballots were cast in the second round. Genser pulled away with 153 votes, topping Bloom, who had 137 votes, and Feinstein, who had 64 votes. After the total vote tallies were announced, Bloom and Genser hugged.
SMRR members on Sunday also voted to endorse three challengers for seats on the Santa Monica College board of trustees, which has been criticized by faculty for agreeing to cut academic programs last year, including the popular automotive department, rather than scale back pay raises and benefits. The three contenders on the SMRR slate are Susan Aminoff, Rob Rader and Doug Willis.
For the local school board, SMRR members voted to back incumbents Jose Escarce and Maria Leon-Vasquez, alongside challenger Ana M. Jara. Also up for grabs this November are two seats on the Santa Monica Rent Control Board, and SMRR members agreed to back the only two people seeking the group’s endorsement, incumbent Jeffrey Sklar and a challenger who’s spent 15 years as a public defender for Los Angeles County.
It was standing room only at the annual convention, which was interrupted at its beginning for a fire marshal to count attendance. Some 300-plus members and guests attended the event, many of them spilling out into an adjacent corridor. Most of the audience were middle-aged or elderly, and almost all were dressed casually. Some candidates wore aloha shirts and sandals.
With its endorsements out of the way, SMRR now has to deal with the local chamber of commerce, which for the first time has formed a political action committee and will be endorsing candidates this fall. Zane and co-chair Nancy Greenstein started the meeting by urging SMRR members to be active. Zane pointed to two mailers already distributed by the chamber that direct voters to a Web site with links to various news articles chronicling the city’s problems with parking, homelessness and traffic.
“What this really means is they’re taking the guns out of the holsters early, they’re ready to fire because they’ve got a lot of money,” Zane said. “If you think this is going to be an easy election, think again.”
Added Mayor Bloom, who shook one of the chamber’s mailers in the air while speaking to the convention: “This is about divisiveness. This is about division. This is about two Santa Monicas — not one Santa Monica.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 2, 2004. Read the original PDF.