First of a series
[img]1323|left|Stephen Murray||no_popup[/img]As the only stranger in a traveling party of City Council candidates who spent the past month and a half visiting Culver City neighborhoods, answering questions about City Hall and about special interests, Stephen Murray, saw it, naturally, as a get-acquainted tour.
No one looked as relaxed as this unorthodox environmental specialist. His almost neatly coiffed black hair and horn-rimmed glasses sometimes gave him a restless professorial appearance.
Smiles easily.
Seems accessible.
He seemed to be trying not to convey any conventional political trappings beyond genuine congeniality.
The only candidate who doffed his jacket at every community forum, even rolled his sleeves last Thursday at Raintree, Mr. Murray often perched himself on the corner of the table where his opponents were arrayed, he was comfortably self-deprecating every evening, and he was the lone candidate who never spoke from a script or referred to a single note.
What do his five rivals for four seats in the April 10 election think of Mr. Murray, who recently became a new father?
For the weak of heart, this is where you go to question No. 2.
“He seems like a nice person. He is completely unqualified to be a City Councilperson at this time because he knows little about the community and nothing about the city.”
Mr. Murray, however, appears to be a collegial type who can absorb a snowball to the kisser and rebound more determinedly than before.
Question: When you started in January, did you diagram your campaign, deciding how you would apportion your time?
“Yes and no,” he said, which seemed to span the range of available answers. “I knew what my goals were, but I did not have everything lined up.”
His goals?
“I can’t fulfill all of my goals until after the campaign is over. I have yet to achieve some of them.
“Obviously it is not just a thing of just winning the election. It is about putting forth important issues. Getting myself known definitely is an objective.
“It apparently is a tradition in Culver City to run two times,” he said in reference to two opponents who ran twice before winning (Mayor Mehaul O’Leary and incumbent Andy Weissman) and one who is presently running for the second time (Meghan Sahli-Wells).
“My campaign started because I saw the opportunity for us to make a change. I thought this was a great time to make a change. I wanted to put out there the idea of sustainability, to shift the mentality to be more sustainable.”
(To be continued)
