“I am in,” he told thefrontpageonline.com before taking the No side in a debate with former City Councilman Paul Jacobs on the Charter Reform measure.

        This is roughly Mr. Vera’s fourth measurable change of mind since the Jan. 13 filing deadline for conventional candidates.

  

 

         As he repeatedly has demonstrated, there isn’t anything conventional about him. So far, the tactic has worked. Although he has until March 28 to re-enter the City Council race for two seats as a write-in, Mr. Vera said he will formally begin the requisite paperwork process late next week. 

        He said he will be absent from Tuesday night’s Redevelopment Agency meeting, giving a speech for U.S.  Rep. Diane Watson (D-Culver City).

In the afterglow of the Culver Crest meeting, it was obvious that Mr. Vera will have to complete his paperwork before his skeptical colleagues are convinced he is serious about pursuing a fourth term.

Around City Hall, political wise men and wise woman today were bantering about how — or even if — a Vera write-in candidacy would affect the dynamics of the election. The news received a chilly reception. Cynical to their core, the pol-watchers are not taking any bets until Mr. Vera’s documents have been handed to Dep. City Clerk Ela Valladares.

 Voters Finally Stimulated?

 

        In recent years, interest in hometown elections has been lower than some high school boys wear their pants. Until this year, they could have held candidate forums at Hillside or Holy Cross.

But something seems to have changed for this spring’s election.

        It may be a sense that all three City Council candidates have brought a uniform, button-down professionalism to the stages where they appear together.

        There is a feel in the air that the contenders Mehaul O’Leary and Scott Malsin, and the incumbent Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, are more polished, better organized and look sharper than some City Hall candidates have in the past.

        Gone for now was the aw-shucks, low-key, highly informal, can’t-we-be-pals style of campaigning featuring a range of candidates, from shoo-ins to those who couldn’t win even if their own spouses cast the only vote on Election Day.

        Mr. Malsin, Mr. Silbiger and Mr. O’Leary dressed, acted and spoke as if they were budding young businessmen totally tuned in to and turned on by their voting audiences.

        Since Mr. O’Leary was just married last September and Mr. Malsin’s daughter won’t be two years old until May, both freely salted their vision for Culver City with the dreams of up and coming family men. They spoke idealistically about the kind of community they envision for their just-developing families.

  

        In the cafetorium at El Rincon School, in the shadow of hilltop Culver Crest, the candidates’ rhetoric resonated with a spirited crowd that will help determine which two of them will go home happy on Election Night.

        The candidates and the crowd looked each other in the eye. They connected.

Distinctions were evident, not overwhelming.

        Mr. Malsin and Mr. Silbiger stressed their lengthy endorsement lists, Mr. Malsin from community organizations, Mr. Silbiger mainly from County and state politicians and groups.

        Mr. Malsin underscored his diverse activism and accomplishments over the years, including a current term on the Planning Commission. Mr. Silbiger listed extensive accomplishments over four years on the City Council. Interestingly, since he has been a proud iconoclast throughout his term, he accented how many times he had been a leading force in creating majority Council votes. I

The deftness and  experience of the vice mayor as a candidate rang through one time in a single king-sized sentence. He identified a sensitive and currently hot topic while finding a way to tie in the subjects dearest to him.

        “During my second term,” Mr. Silbiger said, “I promise to create a local animal control program to protect our pets and families from vicious, dead and diseased animals, to bring light rail to Culver City in order to help the environment, create jobs, decrease pollution and help our businesses.”

Activists have come before the City Council twice in the past seven months and both times have fallen far short of achieving local animal control.

        Mr. Silbiger’s surprisingly bold, concrete pledge on a decided longshot appeared to be the only specific vow that any candidate made at the Culver Crest forum.  

        Mr. Malsin, succinct and focused, easily was the most marketing conscious. Four times during his introductory talk, he said his name, clearly and with a bump so there would be no confusion with anyone else on the dais. He also alluded several times to the breadth of his support, “from hundreds of residents, most community leaders and ten former mayors.” 

        The web designer explained how he wanted to link  arms with residents, to sit down together and draw the kind of picture they want rather than having him dictate to them. “Together we can lay out a vision for the future,” he said. 

        All of this left Mr. O’Leary with a substantive challenge that he appeared to meet. In the absence of endorsements and previous organized political activity, he proposed what he identified as hard-nosed, common-sense solutions to the primary issues of the day. He repeatedly reminded the audience that he was a longtime business owner “who thinks like a businessman,” and who advocates tough talk.

Mr. O’Leary’s most enduring observation may have been his criticism of the way City Hall is handling its present revenue shortfall.

        “As a businessman you know that nobody fixes revenue problems with cutbacks,” he said. “You find new streams of income.”  Mr. O’Leary said that Downtown “needs businesses that stay open after ten at night.”

 

 

        Freshly scrubbed, hair coiffed fashionably short,  attired in well-cut, conservative business suits, the three candidates sat on stage at El Rincon at an elongated table where they flanked the moderator Ron Ostrin, vice president of the Culver Crest group.

        So tidy and orderly were they that they could have passed for fraternity boys reuniting ten years after graduation.

        All were trim and of similar height with center-of-the-road speaking styles. The lookalikes —the gray-suited Mr. Silbiger, the blue-suited Mr. O’Leary and the brown-suited Mr. Malsin —almost were triplets.

        But the timbre of their messages distinguished them every time, starting with the fact that Mr. Malsin and Mr. Silbiger favor Measure V, Charter Reform, and Mr. O’Leary opposes it.

Attempting to show a roomful of voters that they were flexible, all emphasized that if the other side wins the V campaign, they are prepared to smoothly adapt.

        If surface impressions are a factor especially in the early going, consider:

        Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Malsin spoke extemporaneously in their introductions to the Culver Crest audience. The City Councilman, Mr. Silbiger, read from a two-page script.

        Like a thick layer of icing on a chocolate cake, the Irish brogue of Irish-born Mr. O’Leary paved the route of every word he uttered. The only candidate with no City Hall experience, all three buttons of his suit coat were closed whenever he stood to speak.  Mr. Malsin and Mr. Silbiger left their coats unbuttoned.

        Under the light, steady hand of the moderator Mr. Ostrin, the candidates were treated as equals, given equal billing, equal opportunities. This may have conveyed a message to the audience that the three candidates for the two available Council seats were not widely separated.

        No one was nervous. No one became lost in his responses. No one committed a memorable gaffe, although some claims later were challenged. And no one dominated the informally organized debate.

        No obvious winner or loser emerged.

        The only hardbitten words of the night came from Mr. Vera, the sometimes-candidate, who took a shot at Mr. Silbiger for changing his mind on a key vote. The mayor also slung a sarcastic zinger at his colleagues on the City Council, telling the audience that backers of Charter Reform “are taking you for a bunch of fools.”

        Early in the evening, when Mark Salkin, president of the Culver Crest Neighborhood Assn., suggested flipping the agenda and opening with the Measure V debate, he noticed Mr. Vera had not arrived.

        Playfully helpful, Mr. Jacobs volunteered to speak for both sides, an offer quickly rejected.