First of two parts
Even though she was the last candidate into the race and even though her name and face recognition supposedly were low, Prof. Patricia captured the third and final open seat on the School Board last week with what may be branded superior strategy.
When it came down to a pinch-tight margin on Election Night, newfangled style defeated old-fashioned.
Community activist Alan Elmont was the West Los Angeles College history professor’s chief competition for the Board — after Karlo Silbiger and Kathy Paspalis had sprinted away with first and second places.
Mr. Elmont played the traditionalist in the campaign, and he sought to knock on every voter’s door.
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Prof. Siever
Significantly, Prof. Siever has as much longevity in Culver City as Mr. Elmont, whose credentials as a hometown boy were strongly touted.
Since she had to play catch-up, and fast, the longtime community college educator did the door-to-door, but also much more, because she had a large support team and a comparatively elaborate/expensive strategy.
How to Create Impact
Needing to make a swift and broad splash with the relative masses, she went to the printed word — mailers, which cost the kind of money that Mr. Elmont’s campaign never had.
“No. 1,” says Prof. Siever, “we went to the schools. We handed out over a thousand little pamphlets to people picking up their children.
“We walked the precincts. We did a phone bank in this room,” she said, sweeping her right arm across the brightly lighted cubicles in the second-story mid-city real estate office. “Some precincts we walked twice. We also sent out special mailers. And not long before Election Day, we sent out 5,000 mailers.”
If only at a glance, the under-rated, perhaps underappreciated, Siever campaign sounds like a busy-bee organization. It was impossible to not hear whispers — a campaign-long buzzing undercurrent of resentment. This static was fueled by longtime insiders who regarded Luther Henderson’s wife as an outsider, despite her lengthy residency, for two reasons.
Throughout its 40-year history, a certain Culver City element never has accepted West Los Angeles College and its handsome, sprawling campus as a cultural asset for their hometown. By a quirkish technicality, the campus is on County ground. Never mind that, geographically, it is closer to the bosom of Culver City than thousands of residents.
Prof. Siever’s second handicap to overcome was her primary identity as a community college teacher. To some, the very notion of a two-year post-high school is either threatening or impenetrable or both.
Her resume was too high-falutin’ sounding for persons who feared Prof. Siever would be too scholarly, that she could not comprehend the so-called vastly different world of grammar school and high school that the Board deals with every other Tuesday night.
“It’s all education,” she would tell audiences where some skeptics hung out. “Education is education.”
Turns out that the skeptics only were louder than some of her supporters, but by no means more numerous.
Although Mr. Silbiger and Ms. Paspalis practically lapped the 6-candidate field, Prof. Siever won third place with 1,646 votes, a remarkable tribute to the candidate and her carefully scripted campaign organization. She defeated the more grassroots Mr. Elmont by 117 votes.
(To be concluded on Monday)
