New SMRR Members Could Carry Clout

By Jorge Casuso

June 3 -- As many as 200 new members of the city’s powerful tenants group could help decide Santa Monica’s political fate when they weigh in at the group’s nominating convention in August, The Lookout has learned.

Most of the new members of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights were signed up by political stakeholders shortly before an early May enrollment deadline intended to safeguard against candidates mounting stealth membership drives weeks before the convention.

The deadline was changed last year from three weeks to three months before the convention after several candidates flooded the floor in 2002 with recruits whose sole purpose was to vote them onto the coveted SMRR slate.

SMMR officials would not reveal the number of new members signed up shortly before the deadline, saying only that it was “probably a couple of hundred” and that it matched the number of recruits signed up two years ago.

“It was probably a couple of hundred,” said a high ranking member of the organization. “I don’t think (the new deadline) changed anything other than the time.”

“It just feels more orderly,” said a SMRR leader. “I think the closer you get to the actual convention, there’s more rush and panic. Maybe they’re more organized” this time.

SMRR Chair Dennis Zane said the group always welcomes new members and that some of the late recruits may have been reaped during a membership drive mounted by the organization.

“It’s good to have members,” said Zane. “From what I can see, they come from a diverse set of constituencies, and that’s good too.”

Two years ago, new members helped spur the biggest turnout ever at a SMRR convention and were instrumental in the endorsements of Abby Arnold (the top vote getter for City Council with 131 votes) and Oscar de la Torre (who received 135 votes for School Board), after the two candidates pooled their recruits.

This year, four key constituencies -- Pico residents, union supporters, faculty members and their backers and supporters of incumbent Councilman Michael Feinstein -- have been signed up to vote at the convention, according to several sources.

The largest faction is comprised of Pico residents recruited by Ana Maria Jara, who is seeking one of three open seats on the school board, and her daughter, Ana G. Jara, co-chair of the Pico Neighborhood Association.

The Jaras said they signed up more than 40 new SMRR members. “Some of them have not been involved, others were new to the area, others were SMRR members two or three years ago,” said Ana Maria Jara.

The group’s convention is an ideal forum for the city’s most disenfranchised community to flex its muscle, Jara said. (A Pico Neighborhood resident has never been elected to the City Council.)

“This is definitely a way for them to have a say and be heard,” Jara said. “They should be involved in everything that happens in the city. We feel that this is the right forum for them.”

The local Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union -- which has become a political force over the past eight years -- did not disclose how many new supporters had joined the tenants’ group. But SMRR officials confirmed that they had signed up the second largest number of new members.

Union leaders said they had made sure their supporters had met the early deadline to rejoin if their membership had lapsed.

“We let people know that the deadline had been changed to renew their membership,” said Vivian Rothstein, a former union organizer who works for the Living Wage Coalition.

Santa Monica’s Education Team -- a new coalition of college faculty and school district teachers -- recruited “three or four dozen” new members, said Kelly Hayes-Raitt, a spokesperson for the new group.

“There was a concerted organizing effort to have members join SMRR,” Hayes-Raitt said. “It’s a good opportunity for SMRR to embrace these new members and issues. I would hope that SMRR would look at this as an opportunity and not a threat.”

Councilman Feinstein, a member of SMRR as well as a Green Party leader, has also signed up new members, although he has yet to officially announce his candidacy for one of four open council seats.

“I had some people join,” Feinstein said. “I didn’t abuse the process and try to sign up a large number of people who would come in to manipulate it for the benefit of any one candidate without having a commitment to the organization’s platform.

“My intent was the same that it was since I first became active in SMRR in the early 90s,” Feinstein said. “That was to encourage some members of the community for whom the SMRR platform makes sense and should be part of the decision-making process to endorse candidates who would be running on that platform.”

The largest number of late recruits, however, may not be tied to any constituency, Zane said.

“From what I can gather, the largest group is none of the above,” he said. “There’s another sixty, seventy or eighty or so who are not affiliated with those groups.”

The new recruits -- and the coalitions candidates can build with the new constituencies -- could prove critical in winning a slot on the SMRR slate, which translates into thousands of automatic votes from rent-control tenants and the support of the organization’s well-oiled political machine.

In addition to changing the deadline for new members, the group also changed the number of votes needed to win an endorsement from a simple majority to 55 percent, which must be garnered in no more than three rounds of ballots.

If the membership fails to endorse enough candidates for the open seats, the SMRR steering committee could vote to back a candidate.

“The steering committee tends not to do that,” said a SMRR official, “especially if the group has spoken.”

Next: A look at how the race for City Council is shaping up.