After three of the four certain, and five potential, candidates for the City Council, pulled papers yesterday, the first opportunity for declaring an intent to run, a long dust-dry spell is expected to follow.
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Incumbents Andy Weissman and Mehaul O’Leary, the Mayor of Culver City, flanked near-miss Meghan Sahli-Wells on Opening Day. A year ago last April, in a white-knuckles countdown, Ms. Sahli-Wells lost to Jeff Cooper by 32 votes.
In this strangest election single Ringling Bros. left town, Mr. Cooper is the only one of the five original Councilmen who either isn’t running or dropping out.
Speaking of someone who is neither:
Former Councilman Scott Malsin, the first person to enter the City Clerk’s office in the last election, has been burnishing his credentials as a dramatist this year.
After theatrically announcing his resignation from the Council eight days ago to retain full use of his family’s healthcare benefits for the rest of his life, friends say Mr. Malsin is expected to lengthen the will-he or won’t-he drama.
With a Jan. 23 filing deadline, they suspect he raise the drama stakes to the max — but he will run.
Others have entered the name of former Councilman Gary Silbiger.
Who knows?
Asked point-blank, face-to-face, last week, Mr. Silbiger did not say yes and did not say no.
Which hardly unclouded the picture.
Earlier this month, Councilman Chris Armenta said he was retiring after his first term expires in April for reasons related to his position with the state Board of Equalization.
Barring Mr. Silbiger’s commitment, there will be four candidates for four seats, which normally would obviate the need for an election — and it would this time, too, except for Mr. Malsin’s mid-term temporary withdrawal from the Council.
Unless there is a surprise entry or two, yesterday’s three filers and Mr. Malsin all will be seated on the Council in April with an asterisk attached.
At issue is, who is going to get saddled with Mr. Malsin’s two-year seat?
The top three votegetters will assure themselves of healthy, full four-year terms.
No. 4, through no fault — or desire — of his or hers, will get stuck with the short seat and have to run again in ’14 for the seat.
Mr. Malsin shrewdly timed quitting the Council last week before having served two full years so that he could immediately run again.
Theoretically, he could pile up eight more years on the Council while having sat down for only a few weeks between “terms.” The City Charter calls for a two-year stepdown between terms, but Mr. Malsin was able to carve a route that eluded that requirement, which did not win a popularity contest for him at City Hall.
This means the order of finish on Election Day is more critical than it has been for any previous City Council election.
(To be continued — Next: a two-part Meghan Sahli-Wells profile)
