CAST AWAY: Turnout on par with previous mid-term elections
CITYWIDE — Santa Monicans for Renters Rights will remain the ruling political party in city government after its candidates swept the Santa Monica College Board, School Board and Rent Control Board races on Tuesday.
With all precincts reporting, unofficial election results show that each of the candidates endorsed by SMRR won open and challenged seats on the three boards,giving independent school board incumbent Shane McLoud the boot in the process.
The results mean SMRR will continue its hold over city government as it has maintained throughout the majority of its existence since 1979. The only SMRR-endorsed candidate who came out empty-handed in Tuesday’s election was City Council candidate Gleam Davis.
Candidates were up until the early morning hours awaiting the results, which did not start rolling in until after 10:30 p.m., or two and a half hours after polls closed.
“I was up until 2 a.m. at home, looking at the computer for results,” said newly elected Rent Control Board member Zelia Mollica.
Voters carried current Rent Control Board Chairwoman Jennifer Kennedy back into office, handing her close to 30 percent of the votes. Fellow SMRR endorsees Marilyn Korade-Wilson and Mollica garnered 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively.
“I’m happy and enthusiastic about having Zelia and Marilyn coming to join the board,” Kennedy said.
Property Manager and Real Estate Broker Robert Kronovet’s message of bringing back a minority voice to government apparently didn’t resonate with the majority of voters, who only gave him 16 percent.
Voters handed a victory to school board incumbents Emily Bloomfield and Oscar de la Torre, who led the group of SMRR candidates in the race with 22 percent and 19.7 percent of the votes, respectively. PTA mom Kelly McMahon Pye (19.6 percent) and accountant Barry Snell (17.8 percent) rounded out the school board winners.
Election results show that Santa Monicans support the public education system, said McMahon Pye, who believes she was elected because of her sincerity to serve the public schools and for her experience as a PTA executive board member at both Will Rogers Elementary School and John Adams Middle School.
“I’m ready to work,” she said. “We have a phenomenal community.”
Taking in 13.4 percent of the vote, the odd incumbent out was McLoud, a fifth grade teacher at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in Los Angeles, who was voted out after serving one term. Though she dropped out shortly after qualifying for the ballot, administrative educator Sidonie Smith still took 7.23 percent of the votes.
The Santa Monica College Board will welcome back Chairwoman Nancy Greenstein, who captured the first of four available seats with 22 percent of the vote. Louise Jaffe, a teacher, pulled in 21 percent, followed by David Finkel (19 percent) and Andrew Walzer (17 percent).
Rounding out the list of candidates, college administrator Tom Donner and financial adviser Susanna Kim Bracke were both unable to draw enough support to win, with 13 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
“I had a major community outreach effort where I knocked on thousands of doors,” Walzer said. “I really did a lot of hard work and I was rewarded.”
Kronovet wonders if the Rent Control Board results might have been different if he had spread his campaign message sooner, as in running television commercials earlier or meeting more voters. The Kronovet for Rent Control Board commercials ran on local and cable networks such as Fox News and CNN.
“It may be a small election, but it’s an important campaign,” Kronovet said. “I think we have a wonderful opportunity to win in ’08.”
Meanwhile, getting bounced from the school board came as a shock to McLoud, who was the only teacher on board.
But McLoud said his absence will be felt on the board, but not the district, as he plans to continue to advocate for the issues that matter to him.
“Though I’m disappointed I’m not being reelected to the School Board, I’m satisfied that I contributed to the improvement of our schools for the past four years,” McLoud said on Wednesday. “Though I wanted to continue to reform efforts, I have confidence in the new and existing school board members’ ability to continue to make our schools better.”
While the newcomers have a list of goals they would like to see fulfilled in their first terms in city government, those who have been around a while plan to spend the next few years taking care of existing business. The next few years will give both new and reelected board members the opportunity to prove to voters that the campaign promises made were not merely a tactic to get elected.
On the SMC Board of Trustees, members talked openly about their hopes to leave a legacy in their next term of repairing relationships between administrators, faculty and neighbors in the college, and working hard to produce a balanced budget.
“We have a new board and we have a fairly new president [Dr. Chui Tsang],” Greenstein said. “The opportunities are unlimited for what we can all accomplish together.”
School Board candidates hope to bridge the racial gap within the public school system, as well as boost math scores.
The first item on the list of priorities came on the campaign trail for de la Torre, when he came across a group of John Adams Middle School boy scouts who asked the board member why their school does not have any lockers, while Lincoln Middle School does.
The answer could lie in the perception that the environment at Lincoln Middle School, located on California Avenue north of Wilshire Boulevard, is safer than John Adams Middle School, located on 16th Street south of Pico Boulevard, and that the students at John Adams would use the lockers to inappropriately stash weapons or other outlawed items, de la Torre said.
“I’m not going to say that’s the reason, but it’s something that smells like that,” de la Torre said. “I’ve never seen research or a study that shows that lockers create more violence on campus.”
On the Rent Control front, candidates say they want to promote communication between landlords and tenants, and educate landlords and tenants on rent control laws.
The next term will be spent to ensure that there is diversity within Santa Monica and there are as many outreach programs for tenants as there are for landlords, Mollica said.
“My goal would be, four years from now, the people who are renters who really want to stay in Santa Monica will still be here,” Mollica said.
Voter turnout on Tuesday lies in the 41-percent range, according to the number of votes cast for local measures. The number is in stark contrast to the 2004 election, when 62 percent of registered voters came out to the polls, though 2004 was a presidential election year. The turnout in Tuesday’s election closely mirrors that of the 2002 mid-term election, when approximately 44 percent of the city’s registered voters participated.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 9, 2006. Read the original PDF.