ers Gleam Davis, Terence Later, Jenna Linnekens, Mark McLellan and Terry O’Day.
Holbrook and O’Day, a planning commissioner, have been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, while McKeown, O’Connor and Davis, an attorney, have been backed by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), an influential tenants group that has had a hand in driving public policy for the last 30 years, as it has held a majority on the council for decades.
Santa Monica has built a reputation for fielding a long list of council candidates, more so than most neighboring cities, said Bob Stern, director of the Center for Governmental Studies, which studies the electoral process and advocates for campaign finance reform.
“Santa Monica has much more of a competitive City Council race, at least for cities without term limits,” Stern said. “That’s because you have some very active organizations and the citizens of Santa Monica are much more politically aware.”
Stern said Santa Monica’s size also contributed to the bulging ballots of the past because it is large enough to field a wide range of candidates, but small enough that the city isn’t broken into council districts, which may exclude many because of residency requirements.
Another reason for the high number of participants could be the relative ease by which candidates can qualify for the ballot. There is no cost involved. Those looking to run simply must collect 100 valid signatures from voters registered in Santa Monica.
That may be a challenge for those without a large network of supporters, which could have contributed to the lower number of candidates who qualified this time around, said City Councilman Ken Genser, who has served on the council since 1988.
Out of the 23 people who pulled nomination papers, 12 returned them, two of whom failed to collect the correct number of signatures, according to the City Clerk’s office.
“We’re also talking about only three seats instead of four,” Genser said. “That could be a factor.”
Councilman Richard Bloom is concerned that the cost of running a campaign may have become a deterrent along with a voter-approved initiative — Proposition LL — that strictly prohibits accepting gifts or employment from those who have received a benefit from the council, such as a “yes”vote for a particular construction project. Council members are not full-time, and many have jobs that call for them to interact frequently with those who have business before the council.
“Our campaign contribution limit hasn’t changed in many years, and I think there’s this 100-pound guerilla representing independent expenditure campaigns that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years. That can be very intimidating,” Bloom said. “I think that scares people away,as does (Prop.LL).”
A successful campaign can cost anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000, political pundits said. Campaign contributions are capped at $250 per person.
“This may be a little self serving, but perhaps people are not as unhappy as they used to be,” Genser said, offering reasons as to why the ballot will look a little shorter this year compared to others in the past. “I think overall we have a high amount of civic participation, and it makes the job more time consuming and that might discourage people, or there are so many people involved — more people speaking out — that they feel their voices are being heard and that’s why they’ve chosen not to run.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 23, 2006. Read the original PDF.