One month and four days out from Election Day, City Council candidate Daniel Lee, introducing himself daily to voters, is gathering momentum.
Physically and otherwise.
At 36 years old the youngest candidate in the seven-person field, Mr. Lee, sounding slightly fatigued, said that “I have been doing a lot, a lot of walking,
“And positive things are happening.
“I just found out I came in first in a straw poll in the kids’ (Ask2Know) forum last week,” he reported. “I also was endorsed by the Sierra Club, and yesterday I was endorsed by the Culver City Community Coalition.”
The dominant lesson for most hometown office seekers – Mr. Lee included — is that campaigns are made of shoe leather.
“The most positive thing,” Mr. Lee said, “is that I have been walking a lot,” emphatically stretching out the last word.
“I have been walking with a lot of volunteers as well. Mostly, it has been people taking me around to their neighborhoods, introducing me to their neighbors.”
Mr. Lee, a social justice activist who has traveled the country, now makes his living as a social worker when he is not campaigning.
“The big push in my campaign overall,” he said, “is to make sure we get mail in front of people as quickly as possible so we don’t miss the vote-by-mail deadline.
“The mailers start going out on March 16. I am trying to meet as many people as possible before the 17th or 18th because voters tend to immediately send their mailers back.”
Mr. Lee said that “quiet skies” – complaints about noisy flyovers from LAX – are a major theme in his campaign.
Drilling, especially the fracking kind, in the nearby Inglewood Oil Field – 10 percent of which is in Culver City – is a perennial issue.
Debates over bike paths, pro and con, have risen to prominence in Mr. Lee’s campaign.
“Residents talk about places where bike paths are obviously needed,” he said. “Other people complain don’t think so many are needed.”
Perhaps the most welcome change in Mr. Lee’s bid for a City Council seat is that voters are getting to know him. “Earlier, I spent a lot of time introducing myself,” he said. “Now it has helped to have people from the neighborhoods with me. Now people are, like, ‘Oh, I know you. So-and-so has told me about you.’”
Complaints about LAX-related flight paths have made a strong impression on Mr. Lee’s campaign conversations. “Typically, I am not at home when the plans are most obnoxious around me,” he said.
“So I haven’t noticed it as much as some people have.”
Finally, Mr. Lee said that insufficient notice from City Hall about special meetings has been a recurring complaint from residents.
“This has me thinking we need a better process,” he said.
