On the nothing important happened side of the argument, the composition of the Steering Committee barely changed. If you look at the Steering Committee now and the committee that was elected two years ago, eight of the members are the same: Patricia Hoffman, Denny Zane, Sonya Sultan, Bruria Finkel, Linda Sullivan, Michael Tarbet, Roger Thornton, and Genise Schnitman.
[pullquote align=left]However you look at it, the same core group of 60s and 70s lefties (Hoffman, Zane, Sultan, Finkel, Sullivan, Tarbet and Thornton) are still going to run SMRR. Time flies, though, and now for these aging radicals “60s” and “70s” mean something additional. SMRR is a gerontocracy and seems to have no mechanisms to bring in new or younger leadership, other than to reward sycophancy.[/pullquote]The primary changes since then have been minor. Newcomer to Santa Monica politics Michael Soloff, husband of City Councilmember Sue Himmelrich, was originally added to fill a space vacated by Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein after he was elected to the School Board in 2014. At the meeting on Sunday, Soloff was elected to a full term. Jennifer Kennedy, longtime SMRR staffer, was also elected, in effect replacing SMRR co-founder Judy Abdo, who was voted off.
The other change Sunday was that Jackie Martin, a member of UNITE Here Local 11, was elected to the Steering Committee, replacing Pico Neighborhood activist Maria Loya as the committee’s one non-Anglo.
Not much change. However you look at it, the same core group of 60s and 70s lefties (Hoffman, Zane, Sultan, Finkel, Sullivan, Tarbet and Thornton) are still going to run SMRR. Time flies, though, and now for these aging radicals “60s” and “70s” mean something additional. SMRR is a gerontocracy and seems to have no mechanisms to bring in new or younger leadership, other than to reward sycophancy.
(In contrast, the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, the most powerful decision-making body in China, has a mandatory retirement age of 68. Because it’s hard to be elected to the Standing Committee before one turns 50, this acts as a de facto term limit. The Chinese do this because they’ve had bad experiences when power is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals over long periods of time.)
Though the changes to the Steering Committee were minor, at the meeting it didn’t feel like nothing happened. Just the opposite. A lot of this had to do with the build-up: the venerable leadership of SMRR went crazy at the idea that Abdo, who had incautiously invoked the SMRR brand when she campaigned for Pam O’Connor and me in the 2014 election, might be reelected to the Steering Committee, or that Leslie Lambert, a former Rent Board member and affordable housing activist from way back, might be elected.
[pullquote align=right]But to get back to Sunday, the meeting also seemed like something momentous happened because it was just plain sad that Judy Abdo’s old comrades cut her loose from the organization she helped found so many years ago when she was a community activist working in Ocean Park. And the exclusion of Lambert seemed like a brutal rejection of the old progressive wing of SMRR that supported reasonable development to support social services.[/pullquote]The leadership spent SMRR money to whip up turnout. (A paid canvasser even came to my door.) Co-Chairs Patricia Hoffman and Denny Zane used the SMRR newsletter to warn SMRR members that “groups that support luxury hotels, market rate housing and bigger development in Santa Monica [were] organizing, hoping to elect a pro-development SMRR Steering Committee. We need SMRR members to turn out and turn back this challenge.” At Sunday’s meeting, a flyer from Zane and other members of SMRR leadership told members to vote for a “Slow Growth & Renters’ Rights” slate that included all the candidates except Abdo and Lambert.
It was never explained how Abdo and Lambert could constitute a pro-development Steering Committee.
It was also odd that in their piece in the newsletter Hoffman and Zane blamed shadowy pro-development groups for causing the failure of the membership at SMRR’s 2014 convention to endorse any City Council candidates. This and previous failures of the members to endorse were the result of bullet-voting, which is a genuine problem for SMRR.
But at the 2014 convention, there was no group organized by developers telling people to bullet vote. Perhaps Hoffman and Zane were referring to UNITE Here, the hotel workers union, which does support the building of hotels, but the union’s 50 or so members at the convention voted for both Kevin McKeown and me. Since McKeown and I received more votes than the other candidates, and since we represent opposite sides of the development issue, it’s hard to say that the union’s votes prevented anyone from getting the endorsement.
In fact, as anyone knows who has been going to SMRR conventions in recent years, the groups that have tried most to manipulate the endorsement process through bullet voting are the anti-development groups, particularly the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC). At the 2012 convention, SMCLC bullet votes first got Ted Winterer the nomination. Then SMCLC voters switched to Gleam Davis; Davis got the endorsement and then no one else did, since SMCLC didn’t want SMRR to endorse Terry O’Day, Tony Vazquez, Shari Davis or me. As for the 2014 convention, afterwards I was told, by Patricia Hoffman and others (to explain to me why McKeown deserved the SMRR endorsement but I didn’t), that the reason Kevin McKeown didn’t get the 55% needed for the endorsement was because SMCLC members had had a strange strategy to bullet vote for Richard McKinnon.
But to get back to Sunday, the meeting also seemed like something momentous happened because it was just plain sad that Judy Abdo’s old comrades cut her loose from the organization she helped found so many years ago when she was a community activist working in Ocean Park. And the exclusion of Lambert seemed like a brutal rejection of the old progressive wing of SMRR that supported reasonable development to support social services.
So maybe the meeting was important.
Or was it?
While the votes were being counted Sunday, Mayor Kevin McKeown gave a speech recounting what had happened in the city over the past year. Aside from a gratuitous hit or two at old foes, it was a good speech. McKeown fairly summarized what had happened over the past year and what the issues were and are.
Along the way McKeown pointed out that the council had recently approved two housing projects, mixing market rate and deed-restricted affordable apartments. McKeown made the case very well that both kinds of housing were needed in Santa Monica. For one thing, if our children graduating from Samohi come back with college educations, and want to live here, they’re going to need housing and they’re not going to qualify for affordable housing.
McKeown also pointed out that the City finally had a new zoning law. The new law has standards for what developers can build without entering into development agreements, which are now out of favor. McKeown didn’t make the obvious point, but developers are going to fit their proposals into these standards, to avoid development agreements, and these projects, like the two apartment buildings McKeown spoke about, will be built.
This will, of course, infuriate the folks who believe they elected councilmembers like McKeown, Himmelrich and Ted Winterer (in part by getting them SMRR endorsements) for the purpose of stopping development. If the SMRR leadership believes these folks will be satisfied with the election of a “Slow Growth & Renters’ Rights” slate to the Steering Committee, they are mistaken. You already see this with the Residocracy LUVE initiative.
So, in the end, nothing happened.
Thanks for reading.
