Chamber Fires First Volley in Council Race

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

July 12 -- In their opening salvo of the 2004 election season, the Chamber of Commerce last week launched a website and fired off mailers attacking the political establishment’s position on policies near and dear to the business community’s heart.

With the November elections looming and four council seats held out as the ultimate political prize, the chamber wasted no time taking shots at the incumbents and paving the way for a slate of candidates it has yet to endorse.

“Santa Monica should be one of the most desirable places in the world to live, work and play,” reads the red, white and blue web page -- Santamonica2004.com -- launched Wednesday. “Yet in spite of all our natural and fiscal advantages we have fallen far short due to vagrancy, poor planning for traffic and parking, and a suffocating bureaucracy.”

“Together we can do better,” the site reads. “Santa Monica deserves better.”
Scrolling down, the site links to dozens of local news articles which address the issues of “vagrancy and transients, traffic and parking, business climate and city governance.”

A “contact” link encourages visitors to get in touch with their council members if they have a complaint, because “if you don’t keep them honest, nobody will.”

In bold beneath are the names of the incumbents -- Mayor Richard Bloom and Council members Ken Genser, Michael Feinstein and Herb Katz -- up for reelection. Of the four, only Katz is not a member of the politically powerful Santa Monica Renters’ Rights, which has long controlled a council often at odds with the business community.

The chamber’s new political action committee spent some of the nearly $20,000 it has raised so far this year to launch the site and begin sending mailers to all of Santa Monica’s 52,000 registered voters over the 4th of July weekend.

“Personally, I think the City, as a whole, has not done a good job on a lot of these issues,” said Tom Larmore, a prominent attorney who heads the chamber PAC. “We're just trying to alert everyone to what the upcoming issues will be and asking them to use their own judgment and get involved in the election.

“The fact is the chamber hasn’t taken a position on any of the candidates yet and will wait until after everyone has filed,” Larmore added.

Candidates must file their nomination papers between July 12 and August 9 and submit the signatures of at least 100 registered voters.

Some incumbents took the chamber’s message to task. Mayor Bloom, who announced his candidacy last week, called some of the site’s language “a little over the top.”

“They’re right, Santa Monica should be one of the most desirable places to live work and play -- and we are,” said Bloom, who was first elected in 1999. “All you have to do it put your head outside the window."

Council member Ken Genser, who is seeking a fifth four-year term, agreed.

"Certainly the prices people pay to purchase property in this city is an objective indication of how the greater region views it as desirable,” he said. “I certainly think this is one of the greatest communities we could live in.

“That's not to say we don't have problems, but they don't lend themselves to simplistic solutions," Genser said.

The 16-year council member fired back with his own criticism of the chamber itself, questioning not only its message, but its role in the community.

“The chamber presents itself as this community organization, like the Red Cross or something like that,” Genser said. “I have argued it's a political organization.

“It has to decide if it’s going to be a political organization or a general-purpose organization,” he said. “It concerns me that they're trying to do both."

Genser noted that the Chamber appoints half the board members to the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is funded with public monies, and cosponsors the sustainable awards with the City.

Seth Jacobson the chamber’s spokesperson, does not see a conflict.

"It’s not an issue of the Chamber having it both ways, but rather an issue of having it meaningfully engage these important issues,” said Jacobson.

"I mean the council spent three or four hours debating whether they should kill squirrels, when they should be busy tackling issues such as homelessness and circulation," he said, referring to a recent council debate over the fate of ground squirrels in Palisades Park.

The chamber, Jacobson said, has proposed a variety of ways to deal with each of the problems listed on the site.

“We are not just pointing and screaming that something is wrong,” he said. “We absolutely have solutions. And chamber members are willing to step up to the plate and take on new taxes to fund these solutions."

Herb Katz, who hopes to win the chamber’s endorsement, was the only council incumbent not to refute the statements made in on the chamber’s new site.