Part 2
[Editor’s Note: See “And Now for Someone a Little Different — Russell for City Council,” Jan. 23.]
City Council candidate Gary Russell says “Anyway, where we were we?” a lot. He seems to be chronically nervous, and he is eager to cover a maximum amount of philosophical ground when he is being interviewed for the first time.
The bouncing ball on the bottom of a television screen has nothing on Mr. Russell, verbally and physically.
The 63-year-old architect already has left a deep imprint on his rivals, and their first community forum is not until Wednesday afternoon at 1:30 at the Senior Center.
It probably is fitting, and certainly not surprising, that his philosophical interests range from Marx to libertarian and back again.
He laughs easily. He breezily tosses off lines the way someone else would wave to a passerby. After one giggle, he says that “Worst case scenario, I get elected.”
Was he only going for a laugh from his listener?
Who Knows?
As with other of Mr. Russell’s interjections and observations, the answer is murky.
“I think I could bring a lot to the city,” he begins, and immediately he gallops off in a separate direction, talking about something that happened in Wilshire a year ago.
There are plenty of dots to connect, but reading, or interpreting, the dots is difficult.
His jitteriness and his charm come in equal doses, meaning that in this case, one and one add up to captivating. Tracking a dialogue with him across a breakfast booth is, however, a challenge.
Note-Taking Does Not Work
He leaps from fitness for office to a mention of his wife, to a mention of his mother, which reduced note-taking to a very inartful science.
Mercurially, he speeds from subject to subject, as if racing across the Salt Flats.
A successful professional in a Wilshire Boulevard neighborhood, Mr. Russell seems to have emerged from early-life instability in his home life to a point where, at least by his account, he is riding a crest in commerce.
He has been working as an architect since he was 20 years old, but he did not become a licensed architect until 16 years later.
A Word About Truth
Somewhere between talking about what sounded like a train-wreck of an early home life and the launching of his career in architecture, he remembered a single lesson imprinted on him by his father.
“Never lie,” he told me, “and I have not forgotten that. My motto now is, ‘Truth is the best policy.’ That’s a little rough for some people to take.”
He clearly delights in flirting with statements out of the mainstream, and then with a puckish expression, he wonders how or if his listener will respond.
Flying by the seat of his pants, strictly out of necessity because almost no one was around to guide him, he seems to have landed on a star.
The Culver City Connection?
But what his life has to do with Culver City politics, or why he is running for the City Council in Culver City, when the field already is crowded, remain enigmas, unsolved for now. He has lived here 20 years, but appears to be little known.
If he has conversational familiarity with Culver City politics, he did not reveal it, although he has on other public occasions.
A passionate advocate for individual sensitivity toward the environment, Mr. Russell dwells at length on making the earth greener, and once he started a soliloquy on Earth Day.
Culver City issues evidently are somewhere off-stage.
Mr. Russell says his aim is to make Culver City the greenest community in America.
The 11 links on the home page of his website (culvercitycouncil.com) don’t offer insights into his Council-pertinent positions although they are fascinating. Among them are Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, the Culver City Symphony and the U.S. Constitution and the state Constitution.
Therefore, what?
