Dinolfo enjoyed strong showing in Sunset Park
(Editor’s note: This is the second article in a series examining how local neighborhoods voted in the Nov. 2 City Council election.)
By John Wood
Daily Press Staff Writer
NORTH OF MONTANA — If it were up to voters here, Tuesday’s Santa Monica City Council election would have had decidedly different results.
Residents of the broad, tree-lined streets north of Montana Avenue voted overwhelmingly for change in City Hall, throwing their support behind a group of three challengers and one incumbent that were also backed by local merchants.
Meanwhile, across town in Sunset Park, a neighborhood comprised of single-family homes surrounding Santa Monica College, voters had a different take. Election returns show Sunset Park residents voted in line with much of the city, backing three incumbents and one challenger.
The two wealthiest neighborhoods in Santa Monica did agree on two candidates, however. One was Bobby Shriver, a Kennedy family descendant and California parks commissioner who garnered more votes than any other candidate in both communities. The second was the incumbent Herb Katz, an architect who has long represented the council minority.
Shriver, who lives north of Montana, and Katz, a Sunset Park resident, came in first and third, respectively, in the citywide vote. Mayor Richard Bloom and City Councilman Ken Genser rounded out the top four, and each will have a seat on the seven-member City Council through 2008. Genser lives north of Montana. Bloom resides in Sunset Park.
Nearly 70 percent of Santa Monica’s 61,000-plus registered voters cast ballots on Nov. 2, with roughly 8,500 voting by absentee ballot.
Rather than vote for the incumbents Bloom and Genser, residents north of Montana threw their support behind challengers Matt Dinolfo and Kathryn Morea, an analysis of election returns from that neighborhood’s 10 voting precincts shows.
Genser wasn’t surprised.
“Clearly, it’s an attitude difference,” he said. “How to describe it, I’m not sure... It’s just traditional. The northeast corner of the city is traditionally the most conservative.”
Shriver, on the other hand, said he thought there was more significance to the results, adding the quantity of votes he received was unprecedented.
“For someone in 2 and 1/2 months to beat guys who have been in politics for a long time, in their home precincts, by a substantial margin, there must be an idea there,” he said. “People do not respond to things because people have a nice smile. I never believed that. Otherwise every single member of family would win every time they run, and there have been members of my family who haven’t won.”
Shriver, Katz, Dinolfo and Morea belonged to a slate backed by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and were buoyed by support from local business interests. The group’s mantra was change, and it criticized City Hall for being overly bureaucratic and too soft on homelessness. Dinolfo finished sixth in the polls citywide. Morea came in eighth.
In Sunset Park, the race was tighter. Though residents from Sunset Park’s 11 voting precincts backed the four that ultimately won seats, challenger Dinolfo came within 16 votes of replacing Genser for the fourth position. Morea fell back by more that 200 votes, to eighth, trailing challengers Maria Loya, a Pico neighborhood activist, and Patricia Hoffman, a former school board president who ended up fifth in the polls citywide.
Though some candidates said where they lived played only a small role in the votes cast, Katz suggested it may have made a bigger difference, especially for Bloom, who founded the Friends of Sunset Park group. Other factors were at play north of Montana, according to Katz, who said many voters were galvanized against City Hall after being targeted for having tall hedges.
“I think that had a lot to do with that,” he said.
Shriver had a different take.
“There are just as many hedges in Sunset Park as in north of Montana,” Shriver said, adding residents all over the city were eager for change.
Bloom, Genser, Hoffman and Loya belonged to a slate backed by the powerful tenant group Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, which has endorsed a majority of City Council candidates for 19 of the past 26 years. Though it lost one council seat this past election, SMRR already had two members on the council and, therefore, maintained a 4-3 majority.
The race wasn’t nearly as close north of Montana as it was in Sunset Park. Shriver took a dominant lead with nearly 3,000 votes, followed by Katz with 2,096 votes, Dinolfo with 1,977 and Morea with 1,559. Bloom came in a distant fifth with 1,126 votes, followed by Genser with just 851 votes, while Hoffman took 799, election returns from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder show.
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Sunset Park’s picks
Here’s how the top 11 City Council candidates fared among Sunset Park voters:
1) Bobby Shriver 3,151
2) Richard Bloom 2,139
3) Herb Katz 2,072
4) Ken Genser 1,635
5) Matt Dinolfo 1,619
6) Maria Loya 1,567
7) Patricia Hoffman 1,442
8) Kathryn Morea 1,321
9) Michael Feinstein 1,132
10) David Cole 537
11) Bill Bauer 426
The NOMA way
Here’s how the top 11 council candidates fared among voters north of Montana Avenue:
1) Bobby Shriver 2,983
2) Herb Katz 2,096
3) Matt Dinolfo 1,977
4) Kathryn Morea 1,559
5) Richard Bloom 1,126
6) Ken Genser 851
7) Patricia Hoffman 799
8) Maria Loya 551
9) Michael Feinstein 510
10) David Cole 442
11) Bill Bauer 277
(Source: An analysis of Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder election returns from the voting precincts in Sunset Park and the neighborhood north of Montana Avenue.)
(Note: In each neighborhood, one of the voting precincts tallied also juts into a neighboring community. However, an analysis of the returns show the ranking of the candidates would not be affected if that entire precinct were not considered.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 6, 2004. Read the original PDF.