Tag Archives: santa monica elections

Turns out my feelings were not determinative

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My feelings were sure wrong when I wrote on Election Day that they were telling me the election would go like 2012, not 2016. Just when polls were saying that the late breaking vote was going Kamala Harris’ way, a tsunami of Trump Election Day voters swamped her and other Democrats. Still, I’m glad I posted what posted, so that I can remind myself how out of touch my feelings can be.

On that note of self-doubt, I should refrain from saying anything about the debacle. So much is being written about it, even as those who are doing the writing often do so while advising everyone else to take a breath and wait to figure out what happened and what to do. There is, however, a fact I saw in a column by the astute L.A. Times political reporter Mark Z. Baraback that stands out: between 1960 and 1998, 38 years and 19 national elections, there were only seven votes that changed party control of the White House, the Senate or the House. In the 13 elections since 2000, however, there have been ten changes of control.

People are unhappy and have been so a while. When people are unhappy they do counter-productive things. Things, like, well, voting for Donald Trump. That’s why John Maynard Keynes developed a new economic theory in the 1930s—because he saw how chaos and economic distress caused people to turn to fascism and give up on established norms. Mind, I am not calling anyone, least of all any Trump voter, a fascist. But unhappy people want change, and no one promises more change than Donald Trump. Note that the two most successful politicians of the past 20 years, Trump and Barack Obama, both ran on hope and change.

Why are people unhappy? Why do they feel so insecure, so threatened and vulnerable? It’s paradoxical, because the world has never been more productive when it comes to material goods. We should all be swimming in prosperity—not coincidentally, precisely what Trump promises.

Again, why? Politicians and political analysts will look for reasons for the unhappiness, and, more specifically, for why so many Americans turned to Trump; reasons that will, no surprise, fit their varying perspectives. However, from the broadest view possible I suggest that the problem can be summed up with the title of a 2018 book I heartily recommend by Robert Kuttner: Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?

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The local election here in Santa Monica was quite different. Here liberals won, defeating a local fear-based campaign that reflected the Trumpian zeitgeist. (I wrote about this a few weeks ago.)

So, congratulations to the United Slate of Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, and Natalya Zernitskaya. They will join Caroline Torosis and Jesse Zwick to form an unprecedented, six-out-seven liberal and pro-housing and social services majority on the City Council. At the same time, a parking tax and a big school bond also passed easily.

I am not surprised. In the election two years ago Santa Monica voters returned to their liberal traditions, but in that election four liberal candidates for three seats split the vote and only two of them, Torosis and Zwick, were victorious. That split delayed a new liberal majority on the council. Until now. This time Raskin and Zernitskaya ran together in a slate of four candidates for four seats. They all won.

Personally, these last two local elections have been gratifying. Not only do we have a new generation of leaders in Santa Monica, young leaders who will make us proud, but also the liberalism shared by nearly all Santa Monicans will no longer be distorted on the council by otherwise liberal council members spouting illiberal and specious excuses for why we should not provide housing for the current generation of young people and generations to come.

For me it’s been 30 years since I was appointed to the Housing Commission and started agitating for more housing, often to be vilified as “in the pocket of developers.” When I saw the vote totals Tuesday night, showing the United Slate well ahead, it felt good, a little bit of starlight in a dark night.

And with that Trumpian note of personal grievance combined with self-satisfaction, all I have left to say is:

Thanks for reading.

The local vote: preliminary post-mortem

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Shell-shocked after the presidential vote, I’ve been slow putting my thoughts together on the local election. In fact, when analyzing local elections it’s a good idea to wait a few weeks until the final results are certified. The results rarely change (except occasionally in a close City Council race, as Ted Winterer will ruefully acknowledge), but until all the absentee and provisional ballots are counted, one can’t speak about important matters like total turnout, or how different neighborhoods voted.

But in the meantime I can make a few points.

The defeat of Measure LV. Again, the final numbers aren’t in, but it looks like LV, the “Land Use Voter Empowerment Initiative,” performed the same as its predecessor anti-development initiative, the “Residents Initiative to Fight Traffic (RIFT) did in 2008. RIFT got 44% of the votes cast on it, and right now LV is also at 44%. RIFT got about 36% of all votes cast—we won’t know that number for LV until we have the final returns.

While there are Santa Monicans who want no more development, and many residents who will vote yes on anything that promises to do something about traffic (and in a certain sense who can blame them?), there is a solid majority that does not want to plan by ballot box and/or will not arbitrarily restrict future development based on arguments about traffic or community character.

The vote was consistent not only with RIFT, but also with past votes to allow the development of affordable housing (in 1999) and to adopt the 1994 Civic Center plan. The last time a measure aimed against development passed in Santa Monica was the 1990 vote on Michael McCarty’s beach hotel. In the meantime, despite opposition from some elements of the anti-development side, Santa Monica voters have passed many bond issues and taxes, including this year’s Measures GS and V.

They want to manage change intelligently, but most Santa Monicans are not afraid of it.

The LV side has already blamed their loss on the big money spent against LV. But the 2014 vote on the competing airport measures showed that massive expenditures do not persuade Santa Monica voters. The aviation industry spent almost a million dollars, outspending the anti-airport, pro-park campaign by about six-to-one, but still lost overwhelmingly.

Santa Monica voters are sophisticated. Once they have enough information to make up their minds (which takes a campaign because most residents don’t pay attention to local politics), they make up those minds. The anti-development side can’t have it both ways – they can’t claim repeatedly and vehemently that only they represent the residents, and then consistently lose elections. Not, in any case, without implying that residents are ignorant dupes.

Perhaps Residocracy and the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City will take these results to heart and start describing themselves as speaking for “many” residents, which is powerful enough. I doubt it. Speaking for others is a hard habit to break. One might also hope that they would stop describing people who disagree with them as corrupt, but what was startling in this campaign was how viciously the LV’ers attacked opponents who had long been slow(er)-growth standard-bearers. All of a sudden stalwart controllers of growth like Kevin McKeown and Ted Winterer were the tools of developers, on the take. I tip my hat to them for taking the abuse; I hope that they are aware that they were only getting in the back what opponents of the no-change mindset get thrown in their faces everyday.

As for the City Council election, it was no surprise that the four incumbents won easily. The shocker was that Terry O’Day came in first. I assumed that since he was the only incumbent running without the endorsement of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR), he would be the trailing winner. In my recollection, neither Bob Holbrook nor Herb Katz, the council’s longtime non-SMRR members, ever finished first. O’Day also voted for the Hines project. He came in first nonetheless.

This year SMRR didn’t endorse O’Day and two years ago SMRR didn’t endorse Pam O’Connor. Both were elected. But for elevating the development issue above all other issues affecting Santa Monica, SMRR would now be in a situation where all seven members of the council owed their election to SMRR, or believed they did. Instead, now SMRR is back to where it was when Holbrook and Katz were the two independents.

I’ll have more when all the votes are counted.

Thanks for reading.