Part 1
In trailing the nine City Council candidates around Culver City this spring, especially from one community forum to the next, a popular game has been to try and discern what area of speciality each would center on if actually elected on April 8.
Most of them are not mysterious, stating repeatedly what they see as the two or three most important subjects where they pledge to shake up the rhythms.
Far more inscrutable is Loni Anderson, the only distaff member in the field.
Forget predictability. She is almost impossible to categorize, not because she has been imprecise about the course she intends to take but because she has done so much, ventured into so many varied worlds.
[img]90|left|Loni Anderson||no_popup[/img] Unscrambling the Mystery
How do you demystify this sudoku puzzle whom some residents have said is too pretty to be competing for a lofty office at City Hall?
Tall blonde hair, blue of eyes, freshly scrubbed of face, there is no doubt who the attention-magnet, the standout is in the crowd.
A prize-winning member of the Toastmasters, she speaks as smoothly and smartly for herself as if she were serving up a hot fudge sundae.
The other day at the lunch hour, in an elevated seating area of a restaurant as two-way mid-day traffic whizzed along below, Ms. Anderson tried.
A shop steward at the Post Office before she was 21 years old, an ambitious, curious paralegal who ventured out to Japan on her own, met, married, had a son, divorced, returned to her hometown, became a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, and subsequently plunged into a spinning wheel of neighborhood activism with the zeal of a religious convert.
Staking Out a Political Position
Perhaps Ms. Anderson’s mountain-top achievement came last June when she muscularly asserted — and deftly managed to impose — her view in the midst of swirling controversy over the mass redevelopment of 12 1/2 acres of South Sepulveda Boulevard.
The monster-sized project was so vast (also vague and scary, said some) that it would need to be completed in four separate phases over an undetermined number of years.
As an officer of the heretofore quiescent, City Hall-appointed Citizens Advisory Committee, Ms. Anderson stood up near the droopy end of yet another community meeting on South Sepulveda that seemed to be veering toward yet another ditch.
The Background
For more than half a year, aroused residents and entrepreneurs had been railing against a gentleman they regarded as an upstart, an intolerably intrusive developer who meant no good for Culver City, from their view. The builder was both eloquent and elegant in his responses. But they were so upset he could have been Barack Obama and not dissuaded this audience. He was deemed a polarizing villain.
It was 9:30 in the evening last June 28. Most in the room, irrespective of their views, were fatigued and confused about the best route to take.
At this foggy intersection, Ms. Anderson somewhat unexpectedly spoke up. Sharply. In the act, she promptly gave hope and, to the surprise and relief of many, she permanently restored order.
A Technicality
What made the moment so arresting was that Ms. Anderson halted the acerbic disputation on a technical dime.
Weary of the parochial, arcane back-and-forth between angry residents and the builder, she argued that the smudged redevelopment picture only could be clarified if City Hall developed a Specific Plan, a precise architectural strategy, for the neighborhood instead of choosing from among competing philosophical perspectives for upgrading South Sepulveda.
The only unanimity between the warring parties up to that point was that South Sepulveda needed to be improved, today or tomorrow at the latest.
But there had to be a precise blueprint strategy, not just whimsical desires.
When Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld stood to predict it would take 9 to 12 months to craft such a plan, a gasp shot across the room.
Could This be the End?
Was the grand South Sepulveda scheme truly dead or just temporarily delayed?
Shortly, the shock was followed by a lopsided vote of assent by the 9-person citizens committee.
It took awhile for the reality to set in that South Sepulveda really was over, that residents had triumphed, that the builder was leaving town never to be seen again.
And the trigger-puller, the giant-slayer at the nexus of this monumental occasion was the most attractive person in the room, Loni Anderson.
South Sepulveda was the rocket launcher for her City Council campaign.
Eight months later, she is one of eight candidates scrambling behind race favorite Andy Weissman entering the last 33 days for one of the three payoff finishes.
Tomorrow: In her own words
