No-nonsense incumbent Scott Malsin and the irrepressible Jeff Cooper, who unfailingly sees the lighter side, unofficially won the two City Council seats at stake last night in races as breathtakingly narrow as predicted.
Many viewed them as a team, as an entry in horse racing parlance. This concept was reinforced during the campaign when they monopolized the endorsements from certain groups.
Fighting to resist the temptation to toast what would be a sweet comeback victory, Mr. Cooper, notably, pressed his followers to practice restraint since there still are enough outstanding ballots, 140, to affect, if not change, the result.
(On a cautionary note, in the ’03 School Board election, incumbent Stew Bubar trailed challenger Roger Maxwell on Election Night, caught up in post-election counting and eventually won the race.)
In the cases of Mr. Malsin and Mr. Cooper, the winners and their mobs of celebrating supporters said that experience around City Hall was the difference maker, especially with Culver City facing the crunchiest, perhaps nastiest, financial diet in history.
Reading Voters’ Motivations
In the brilliantly lighted and crowded lobby of the historic Culver City Hotel, Councilman Malsin, with wife Anne at his side, said voters recognized both his years of service on the dais and his absolute fealty to a list of pledges he made when first elected.
Surrounded by his family and an audience of backers at his high-ceilinged Studio Estates home, the permanently beaming Mr. Cooper credited a panoply of reasons.
Starting with his decade of seasoning on the Parks and Recreation Commission, a double-edged interlude, he cited his cement-firm comprehension of the signal issues, which he acknowledged was missing when he ran before, and his crucial maturation as a politician, also missing the last time.
Aiming for his second four-year term, Mr. Malsin was the leading votegetter with 2,662, a slender 383-vote margin over the jubilant runnerup Mr. Cooper, who avenged a loss in his first run for the Council two years ago.
The anticipated mad dash for the second Council chair behind kingpin Malsin was a classic squeaker.
You could barely insert one strand of straw between second and third places.
42-Vote Margin
While remembering that a putative victory is not final — especially one this close — until all of the straggling ballots have been counted and certified, the evening was heart-stopping for Mr. Cooper and heartbreaking for the disappointed third-place Meghan Sahli-Wells.
Mr. Cooper, a businessman, scored on 2,279 ballots.
Ms. Sahli-Wells, a neighborhood organizer who urged an egalitarian voice for the community in all City Council decision-making, was a scant 42 votes back at 2,237.
Robert Zirgulis, a voluble reformer who opened his City Council campaign last November shortly after finishing down the line in the School Board election, placed fourth with 770 votes from the 13 Culver City precincts. He announced his retirement from candidacy, saying he will dedicate his energy to being a pragmatic provocateur.
Making an appearance at both victory parties, Mayor Andy Weissman, the most popular candidate in the last City Council election, provided a calming presence in the midst of raucous celebrations. Typically.
An avuncular figure who remains serene at the stormiest moments, Mr. Weissman, watching a giant screen on the south side of the Culver Hotel lobby, said all parties should remain vigilant because of the tentative status of the vote count.
“Given the relative close outcome, I'm not certain that any attempt to explain the results is worth much,” he said.
“Scott, Jeff and Meghan all ran very effective campaigns with only modest differences in philosophy and vision.
“Scott has been a very hard working Councilperson for four years.
“He has served the community well. He deserved to be re-elected.
“That said, and considering that there are still 140 or so absentee ballots to count, which could change the outcome, I think one explanation could be that Scott and Jeff were able to make the case that with the city facing significant financial challenges, experience counts, and they had the experience to be better able to deal with those challenges.”
Sometimes, Mr. Weissman is charmingly curmudgeonly, as when he s aid:
“You will hear different explanations from everyone you ask. If the results change when the remaining absentee ballots are counted, there will be yet other explanations, equally speculative.”
A prominent Malsin backer said that his man was re-elected for the same two reasons that he committed to helping the Councilman’s campaign:
“Scott was the most knowledgeable and the most logical-thinking candidate in 2006 and again in 2010.”
