While voter base remains grassroots, residents rally around one
(Editor’s note: This is the third article in a series examining how local neighborhoods voted in the Nov. 2 Santa Monica City Council election.)
By John Wood
Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY AT LARGE — City Hall’s ruling party might have lost one council seat to Bobby Shriver in this past election, but it still has droves of faithful voters, election results show.
An analysis of voting trends in Santa Monica’s seven major neighborhoods shows each of the communities with a large number of apartments backed three of four candidates also touted by the powerful tenant group, Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights.
SMRR has endorsed a majority of council candidates for 19 of the past 26 years. It faced fierce competition this year from deep-pocketed business interests and the local chamber of commerce, which for the first time in its history, formed a political group to endorse candidates.
Despite that opposition, SMRR lost just one council seat — to the newcomer Shriver, a Kennedy family descendant who pulled in more votes than any candidate in the history of Santa Monica, garnering 60 percent.
Residents in renter neighborhoods backed Shriver first, but also supported SMRR candidates. Voters who live downtown, in Ocean Park, and in the Wilshire-Montana and Pico neighborhoods supported SMRR members Patricia Hoffman, Maria Loya, City Councilman Ken Genser and Mayor Richard Bloom over all of the challengers and, in all but one case, City Councilman Herb Katz.
SMRR spent well over $100,000 on election mailers and canvassing leading up to Nov. 2, and relied on a large group of volunteers to man phone banks and walk precincts. The powerful renters’ group has been able to stay in power partly because of a Santa Monica election law that limits individual campaign contributions to $250, making grassroots fundraising necessary.
Whether the chamber or SMRR can count the election as a victory has been debated in recent days. Chamber leaders said they were proud of their successes in their first official run in local politics. SMRR leaders said the chamber made little headway, despite spending about $1 million.
3C8,“With all of that, the only change is Shriver replaces (City Councilman Mike) Feinstein,” said Denny Zane, co-founder and co-chair of SMRR. “Shriver, I think, is going to have a whole lot more in common politically, I think, with SMRR than he does with the chamber. They’ve got to be wondering about the return on investment.”
Kathy Dodson, president and CEO of the chamber, accused SMRR of scaring renters into thinking the chamber was attempting to put an end to rent control. Still, she said the election was a tremendous success.
“There’s absolutely an effort to reach out to renters,” she said. “I think it’s all the residents that have the same issues that were our guiding issues on choosing our candidates (to endorse) — it’s not just the homeowners,” Dodson added. “I think everyone’s invigorated (by the election results). Everyone feels like we did a really good job and there’s certainly a future in this. We can make a difference at this. It’s exciting.”
Shriver resisted categorizing the election as a victory for SMRR or the chamber. He stressed that his wide margin of victory spoke to a larger theme in the community that residents want to be listened to by their elected leaders.
“The idea that we replaced Feinstein with Shriver is not quite right, and the reason that it’s not quite right is the size and dimension” of the win, Shriver said.
“... ‘Why did Shriver win in a landslide?’ is the more appropriate question, what does that mean?... There was some hit involved in my thing. There was some melody line.”
Shriver said the votes cast send a message to SMRR about what matters to residents.
“They clearly want something,” he said. “They want something that they think I am going to get them.”
The Mid-City neighborhood, a mix of apartments and homes, also backed SMRR candidates. Not so for the city’s key homeowner communities, though. Voters north of Montana Avenue backed a slate of candidates endorsed by the chamber, while voters in Sunset Park split the difference by backing two SMRR candidates and two chamber candidates.
Nearly 70 percent of Santa Monica’s 61,000-plus registered voters cast ballots on Nov. 2, supporting Senator John Kerry over President George W. Bush by nearly 4 votes to 1, and also electing Shriver and the incumbents Bloom, Genser and Katz, election results from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder show.
In the Wilshire-Montana neighborhood, which runs between the two major east-west roadways from Ocean Avenue to the eastern city limit, unofficial election results show that Shriver earned 4,356 votes, followed by Bloom with 3,387 votes, Genser with 2,737 votes and Hoffman, who took 2,683. Katz finished fifth with 2,513 votes, followed by Maria Loya with 2,137 votes and Matt Dinolfo with 2,111.
Residents of Ocean Park chose the same four candidates, giving Shriver nearly 2,500 votes, followed by Bloom’s 2,056, Genser’s 1,680 and Hoffman’s 1,612. They were followed by Maria Loya, Herb Katz and Feinstein, an Ocean Park renter.
Similar results held downtown, where Shriver took the most votes, followed by Bloom and Hoffman. Though Katz took the fourth spot, he beat out Genser by only one vote, according to the election data. Only one precinct in the heart of downtown was studied, however, because the other downtown precincts overlapped into surrounding neighborhoods. Voting precincts in Santa Monica often don’t match up with neighborhood boundaries.
Mid-City voters also followed the renter trend. They gave Shriver 1,662 votes, then turned to SMRR, handing Bloom 1,446 votes, Hoffman 1,209 votes, Genser 1,143 votes and Loya 1,063. Katz came in sixth with 939 Mid-City votes, followed by Morea with 708 votes, Dinolfo with 702 and Feinstein, who took 640 votes, results show.
Though Shriver dominated the council race with nearly twice the votes needed to secure a seat, a handful of precincts in the Mid-City, Wilshire-Montana and Pico neighborhoods ranked other candidates first. This was most evident in the Pico neighborhood, where local resident Maria Loya earned 1,120 votes, followed by Bloom’s 899. Shriver came in third with 875 votes, while Genser and Hoffman both took 712 votes, and the incumbents Katz and Feinstein picked up 530 and 415, respectively.
Santa Monicans also cast more than 8,000 absentee ballots, which are not included in the numbers as broken down above.
Although the debate continues over whether SMRR is losing its grip on a town it has long controlled, Zane suggested the chamber will need to stay positive to succeed.
“The SMRR base, it’s fundamentally demographics, and it’s not just that there are a lot of renters here,” he said. “The Santa Monica vote has got to be one of the most liberal votes of any community in California... That’s just the character of the community. The chamber’s going to have to find a way to work with it, rather than be antagonistic.”
Katz said he was encouraged by the chamber’s success, but added SMRR opponents had much work left to do.
“I think it certainly was a crack in the armor of SMRR, in that Bobby got on as opposed to Patricia Hoffman,” Katz said. “I think the downside was there wasn’t enough of a crack.”
<BOX>
Santa Monica’s seven burghs
Here’s how the top 11 Santa Monica City Council candidates fared in Santa Monica’s seven major neighborhoods:
2B8,WILSHIRE-MONTANA
1) Bobby Shriver 4,356
2) Richard Bloom 3,387
3) Ken Genser 2,737
4) Patricia Hoffman 2,683
5) Herb Katz 2,513
6) Maria Loya 2,137
7) Matt Dinolfo 2,111
8) Kathryn Morea 1,876
9) Mike Feinstein 1,333
10) David Cole 758
11) Bill Bauer 585
OCEAN PARK
1) Bobby Shriver 2,488
2) Richard Bloom 2,056
3) Ken Genser 1,680
4) Patricia Hoffman 1,612
5) Maria Loya 1,539
6) Herb Katz 1,352
7) Mike Feinstein 1,160
8) Matt Dinolfo 1,092
9) Kathryn Morea 939
10) David Cole 346
11) Bill Bauer 328
MID-CITY
1) Bobby Shriver 1,662
2) Richard Bloom 1,446
3) Patricia Hoffman 1,209
4) Ken Genser 1,143
5) Maria Loya 1,063
6) Herb Katz 939
8) Matt Dinolfo 702
9) Mike Feinstein 640
10) David Cole 387
11) Bill Bauer 318
* DOWNTOWN
1) Bobby Shriver 242
2) Richard Bloom 177
3) Patricia Hoffman 142
4) Herb Katz 135
5) Ken Genser 134
6) Kathryn Morea 114
7) Matt Dinolfo 103
8) Mike Feinstein 101
9) Maria Loya 101
10) David Cole 52
11) Bill Bauer 51
PICO NEIGHBORHOOD
1) Maria Loya 1,120
2) Richard Bloom 899
3) Bobby Shriver 875
4) Ken Genser 712
5) Patricia Hoffman 712
6) Herb Katz 530
7) Michael Feinstein 415
8) Matt Dinolfo 394
9) Kathryn Morea 392
10) David Cole 172
11) Bill Bauer 154
SUNSET PARK
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
4C7,10) David Cole 537
11) Bill Bauer 426
NORTH OF MONTANA
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
ABSENTEE BALLOTS
1) Bobby Shriver 4,045
2) Richard Bloom 2,951
3) Herb Katz 2,798
4) Ken Genser 2,527
5) Matt Dinolfo 2,132
6) Patricia Hoffman 2,041
7) Maria Loya 1,671
8) Michael Feinstein 1,550
9) Kathryn Morea 1,345
10) David Cole 799
11) Bill Bauer 641
(Source: An analysis of unofficial election returns from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder regarding Santa Monica’s 66 voting precincts).
(*Only one precinct was counted to reflect the votes cast by residents living in downtown Santa Monica, as the other precincts overlapped too far into other neighborhoods. Voting precincts and neighborhood boundaries do not match exactly, and precincts were chosen to best reflect each neighborhood. Three precincts that overlapped with multiple neighborhoods weren’t counted at all. One precinct that overlapped equally into two neighborhoods was counted once for each neighborhood).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 8, 2004. Read the original PDF.