By Jorge Casuso
February 18 – Twenty-five applicants – including a roster of former City Council candidates -- have thrown their hats into the ring to fill the seat vacated when recently re-elected council member Herb Katz died last month.
The applicants – who met a 5:30 p.m. Tuesday deadline -- will form the pool of candidates the six remaining council members will likely tap next week when they try to come up with the four votes necessary to fill the seat until the next general election in November 2010.
If the council fails to pick a replacement, the City will hold a special election
In addition to seven candidates who made unsuccessful bids in the November race for four council seats– including fifth and six place finishers Ted Winterer and Susan Hartley – the applicant pool includes four candidates who made impressive showings in 2004 and 2006.
They are Planning Commissioners Terry O’Day and Gleam Davis, who finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in the 2006 race for three council seats, and Patricia Hoffman and Matt Dinolfo, who finished fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 2004 race for four open council seats. Dinolfo, who is a doctor, finished fifth in the 2002 race for three council seats.
The crowded field of hopefuls also includes School Board member Oscar de la Torre and Planning Commissioner Gynn Pugh, as well as Anne Greenspun and Jean McNeil Wyner, both former chairs of the Chamber of Commerce who have been longtime leaders of Santa Monica’s business community.
There is wide speculation that the four Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) council members will pick either Davis or Hoffman, who co-chair the powerful tenants group that has controlled City hall for most of the past three decades.
It is also expected that SMRR Council member Kevin McKeown will nominate Winterer, the Recreation and Parks Commissioner who finished some 5,000 votes behind Katz in the November race for four council seats.
But Winterer, who was a vocal supporter of a failed measure to curb commercial development in the beachside city, will likely not win the necessary votes, since four of the sitting council members, as well as Katz, were staunch opponents of Prop T.
Ironically, the SMRR majority holds the votes to replace Katz, a long-time opponent of the tenants group.
The council makeup makes it unlikely that business-backed candidates such as O’Day, who ran with the chamber’s backing in 2006, or Greenspun and McNeil Wyner, former chamber leaders, can garner the necessary votes.
In addition to the seven candidates who ran three months ago – Winterer, Hartley, John Blakely, Michael Kovac, Linda Piera-Avila, Herbert Silverstein and Jonathan Louis Mann – eleven newcomers to Santa Monica’s political arena three their hats into the ring.
They are Barbara Elizabeth Andres, a business woman; Christian Boyce, a neighborhood activist; Myung Deering, a community organizer; William Nole Evans, who has done freelance work for film and television, and Dinah Minot Hubley, a film producer and consultant, according to the applications.
Other newcomers are Richard A. Kale, an attorney who heads a senior health care and housing company; Daniel Klein, a tennis coach who works for a biomedical company, and Tim Maher, a “recovering actor” and CPA.
Other newcomers entering the local political arena are Gordon Potik, a former member of the Culver City School Board; Steven Rodman, a forensic examiner, and Kecia Brooke Weller, a disabilities activist who served on the Santa Monica and LA County Disabilities commissions, according to the applications.
The council’s decision to try and fill the vacancy next Tuesday came as part of a motion last month to declare the seat held by Katz, who died January 7 after a long battle with cancer, vacant.
Katz had been reelected to a fifth four-year term just two months earlier with no opposition from SMRR.
