[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]Last night the four candidates for City Council were visiting Blair Hills, and later this morning they will be analyzed by members of the Downtown Business Assn. over at the Ivy Substation.
These only are moderately relevant details for Councilman Jim Clarke, the quintessential hometown politician if Culver City ever produced one.
He glides from neighborhood to neighborhood as if he lived in 25 different homes. The compact Blair Hills audience that absorbed his keen observations last night in the Community Room atop Kenny might have thought he was a resident of their community.
When the business leaders hear Mr. Clarke this morning, one of them will swear that in his off-hours he is a retailer down the street, so thoroughly has he bathed himself in intimate knowledge of Downtown commerce.
He is temptingly easy to underrate or overlook. Mr. Clarke, proof that wisdom comes with age as the senior in the crowd at 65, is no showman. He could be the man in the vanilla apron at your favorite market, leaning over the counter, asking how the kids and your husband are, so at ease is he in any setting.
Even more than comfortable and casual, he engages in serious research, lightky referred to as homework. He doesn’t waste his relaxation time watching “The Real Housewives of the Hayden Tract.”
Oh, no. In the two years since he succeeded Scott Malsin on the City Council, Mr. Clarke has built his own Culver City Classroom wherein he studies the precise issues in every neighborhood and vigorously pursues paths to resolutions.
He Knows Practically All
Breezily, he glides from neighborhood to neighborhood. The smart money says that the bachelor, the living symbol of ubiquity, has not spent one evening at home since taking office. He has attended every single event the last two years that had more than one participant.
Mayor Jeff Cooper, Christopher Patrick King and Gary Abrams made sturdy accountings of themselves last evening – Mr. King, arguably as well researched as Mr. Clarke, continued to produce imaginative and practical solutions to closely-held and well-known problems, Mr. Cooper brought his optimistic outlook and Mr. Abrams promised that he is the answer to what is wrong at City Hall.
But Mr. Clarke once again upstaged his three rivals for the two Council seats available on April 8 by effortlessly displaying his insider knowledge of Blair Hills’s most vexing issues.
During the customary introduction period, instead of bannering his biography, which is standard, Mr. Clarke cited by name several residents who had contacted him regarding the community’s seemingly insoluble traffic headaches and nagging power outages traceable to Southern California Edison.
Like a professor who practically lives in his laboratory, Mr. Clarke painstakingly detailed the problems and his preferred remedies.
Is he taking his opponents to school at each forum?
