Closing Night, that dreaded scene, has arrived.
At 7 o’clock tonight, Vice Mayor Andy Weissman and Mayor Mehaul O’Leary will sit down in Council Chambers for their final political meal.
The City Council meeting scarcely will have more meat on it than a dieting amoeba.
Muscular politicians of the early 1990s – notably Albert Vera and Steve Gourley — pushed through the subsequently wildly unpopular term limits law. Don’t say “term limits” any place in Sacramento.
The difference between the state capital and Culver City is that shrewd Sacramento politicians have left themselves a pocket full of options.
Culver City elected officials have none – though Mr. Gourley later did slide over to the School Board for one term and Mr. Vera was one of the few to sit out two years and return.
Political life, however, was not the same for Mr. Vera the second time around.
Messrs. O’Leary and Weissman don’t want to leave for the same reason a killer doesn’t want to visit the gas chamber. Inexorably, it is over.
Two consecutive four-year terms, and call the coroner.
This evening’s agenda will be brought into Council Chambers in a baby thimble.
That is how big Messrs. Weissman and O’Leary will feel in early to mid-evening when the symbolic gavel is banged for the final time.
