Form, an occasionally reliable yardstick, suggests that the winners of tomorrow’s seven-way race for three City Council seats will be:
- Scott Wyant.
- Göran Eriksson.
- Incumbent Meghan Sahli-Wells.
Don’t bet more than a single pack of bubble gum. Culver City’s crisscrossing political headwinds are notoriously unreliable.
Messrs. Wyant and Eriksson are one man’s nominees as the best informed, most effective campaigners.
They knew the comprehensive answers to evert question. They never were stumped, never were paused.
By their accounts, together and separately, they know how City Hall works, and how to keep it efficiently oiled.
Following appointments to influential seats inside City Hall — Mr. Wyant as a Planning Commissioner, Mr. Eriksson as chair of the Finance Advisory Committee – they plunged into their tasks with the eagerness, the dedication of aggressive, young climbers.
By contrast, Ms. Sahli-Wells, the only incumbent, has run perhaps the softest of her three campaigns. Fire, oddly, was absent. None of her six rivals may be any more politically capable than she is.
While she is an excellent advocate for her progressive causes, Ms. Sahli-Wells was unable to display or spark enthusiasm for her agenda.
She no longer behaves hungrily.
Her passive approach has been, “Look what I have done for you,” instead of “Here is what I intend to do.”
Will she repeat the final outings of two other heavily favored incumbents of recent years, Scott Zeidman and Karlo Silbiger, and be sent to the sidelines?
Depending on whether the community can muster better than a measly 14 percent turnout, will the unanimous backing of Culver City’s liberal coalition pull Ms. Sahli-Wells across the finish line?
Community progressives are so ardently committed to their cause that a minimum of one of their three favorites – Daniel Lee, Thomas Small and Ms. Sahli-Wells – seems bound to score a seat.
Knowledgeable, eager and worthy as both of them are, Messrs. Small and Lee could not mask their lack of seasoning in the inner sanctum of City Hall.
What of Marcus Tiggs and Jay Garocochea?
Mr. Tiggs’s campaign, laserly focused on the lightly understood state of City Hall’s finances, is drier than other emphases by other candidates.
Mr. Garocochea, the career police and corporate security officer, started in seventh place and appears set to close there.
As noted before, in the absence of polling, this exercise may be comparable to throwing darts in the dark.
“[I]n the absence of polling, this exercise may be comparable to throwing darts in the dark.” Then, the question must be whether Mr. Noonan’s wild speculation is even worth reading. The “progressives” and Mr. Tiggs are impressive, and their vote-gathering abilities may surprise Mr. Noonan.
If you’re voting for Wyant and Erikkson, you’re voting in the ‘same old same old’.
It means you don’t want to change anything and you don’t want all the voices of Culver City to be heard.
And you’re voting for candidates backed by the Chamber: Business rights over residents’ rights.
So here’s a thought. Go ahead and vote for Meghan + Wyant OR Meghan + Eriksson if you’re leaning that way… BUT use your third vote to bring real change to Culver City.
Vote for change. Vote for a voice more representative of the people that actually live here.
Not just the the older white cabal of home-owning ‘types’ that have run this city for too long.
Having Wyant and Eriksson on the council changes nothing.
And the whole shebang has been a big waste of time….and money.
We could have just had a big party instead.
With cake.
For everyone.