As the most ardent partisan in City Hall, when Culver City’s putative honorary mayor, Meghan Sahli-Wells, leaves office this month she can look over her left shoulder with a sigh of impressively broad accomplishment.
More, perhaps, than any of her predecessors in this century.
Speaking as a minority, her progressive agenda stands in shining neon this afternoon, and that is scaling a mountain.
All five of the City Council members are politically liberal, but none of the four men are very close to the mayor’s stances on a full range of electric topics.
Some would argue that Ms. Sahli-Wells started out with a handicap because she is a woman going against an array of men.
It is a tertiary point that if the Council had taken a train to, oh, say, Indianapolis last April – just after Ms. Sahli-Wells was elected mayor and Mehaul O’Leary her viceroy or vice mayor – and returned this morning, they scarcely would have been missed at City Hall. Hardly a memorable year for significant issues.
But there were a few, and every time, Ms. Sahli-Wells was the unquestioned drum majorette on the signal evenings.
No one ever had to suspect her stance on an issue. Introspective, informed but never hesitant, she belted out her positions with ringing clarity, context, depth, comprehension.
Only way she could have done more would have been to bus in allies from San Francisco or Seattle.
As it was, magically and loyally, a Chorus of the Like-Minded just happened to roll into Council Chambers or the Vets on every night that their heroine was facing a thorny
Ms. Sahli-Wells is at her most effective on social justice matters. However, she also is peerless on the environment. As a deeply involved mother-activist, she lives every day the issues she declaims about so passionately.
