The logjam among the eight candidates for the City Council finally is breaking apart, with less than three weeks remaining until Election Day on April 8.
Increasingly, two candidates, Andy Weissman and Randy Scott Leslie, are standing out, for opposite reasons, at the community Candidate Forums — the latest of which was a Rotary Club-Exchange Club-sponsored session at the noon hour today at the Radisson Hotel.
Mr. Leslie and Mr. Weissman have been the only two candidates delivering direct, cogent, concise, middle-aisle, on-point answers to questions.
Some candidates duck answers to difficult questions by meandering.
Other candidates more shrewdly parry their answers by segueing into a statement about their pet subject or favorite motto.
Virtually without exception, Mr. Leslie, completely unknown in the beginning, and Mr. Weissman, well known by wide varieties of people almost as closely as you know your spouse, have been the unswerving model responders for their six colleagues.
Whether that will matter on Election Day, or whether casual forum-goers will even notice are stumpers that will have to go unanswered for now.
The Runnersup
Luther Henderson, Christopher Armenta, Loni Anderson, Jeff Cooper, Mehaul O’Leary and Cary Anderson had their moments last night, although they were mostly opaque. Not one showed the rhetorical flash to swing the light toward himself or herself.
None was able to fight off, to break away from the deadlock with that one, elusive, sterling, lights-out response or a consistently clear line of reasoning that would attract attention.
At the last two forums, Mr. O’Leary has come closest to stepping away from the crowd with two storylines.
In one, he admits to frailties of preparation in his first campaign two years ago, acknowledging that he was running more on enthusiasm than a well-qualified portfolio. As an adjunct, Mr. O’Leary talks about how ardently focused he has been in the interlude, working to catch up informationally and plunging into leadership roles in community groups.
In a separate dimension, the native-born Irishman has indicated that, in a positive way, he will bring a hardheaded businessman’s approach to the City Council — a concept not now represented — and that he will be a plain-speaking firebrand.
The League Shined
These newest impressions are gleaned from the non-partisan League of Women Voters-sponsored forum last night in Council Chambers — easily the best run in the six-week series of community forums.
Probably 80 people were packed into the east side seats in Chambers. It felt crowded because the other side was roped off for show business purposes. It gave a feel of intimacy and excitement to the evening. The Frances Talbot White-run program was a winner mainly because of the format. Instead of a cattle-call approach — one question, the whole flock responds — three candidates were randomly selected to give one-minute answers to each question. The effect was to eliminate tiresome repetition, a trademark of all previous forums.
Warming up the audience before the television cameras came on, Ms. Talbot White warned residents that in formulating their questions, “they should not be designed to make any candidate look especially good or especially bad.”
Until last night, no one had figured how to shave an unwieldy candidates field to manageable size so that both wheat and chaff could be detected by the audience.
Up to here, the forums have been staged in echo chambers. One question is asked, all eight nod in agreement, perhaps even if they don’t agree. It is as if all eight of them — Gary Russell effectively has dropped out — had mothers, fathers and siblings with the same names, and studied under the same political teachers. They have done everything in lockstep except dress alike — and even the more casual dressers earlier in the season have been catching up.
The Weissman File
Mr. Weissman, the odds-on favorite to attract the most votes in a segmented field, has filled to overflow every ambitious expectation he carried into what, for him, has been an industrious, brilliantly plotted six months-plus campaign.
He understands the infrastructure of the city better than all the warm bodies cumulatively on the second and third floors at City Hall. It is only a tad hyperbolic to say he is the best government-connected public speaker since Jefferson. He has served on so many city commissions in the past 30 years that two haven’t been created yet.
Sometimes it can be impossible for a heavy favorite to go wire to wire, but Mr. Weissman, with the tactical aide of well-seasoned friends, is positioned to do that.
The Leslie File
Beyond any question, Mr. Leslie, the longest of several longshots in the packed, fairly faceless field back in January, is the No. 1 surprise of the campaign season.
He is coming up faster than the other six combined on the outside, and he may yet emerge as a winner on Election Day when three open City Council seats will be awarded.
He has come the greatest distance.
He possibly has been the hardest worker.
Unquestionably, he has conducted the deepest, widest ranging research on the intimate social, cultural, political state of Culver City before he arrived here not long ago after retiring from 26 years in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Qualifications
He was a high-powered, world-traveling officer in the Coast Guard accustomed to dealing with major decision-makers.
The sophistication and savvy he has accumulated in his travels sticks out of his smooth personality the same way straw would on a gum-chewing ploughboy.
If that were not enough to impress, he also probably would be a near-unanimous choice as Mr. Congeniality.
Well-liked by his teammates, they only knew that he was taller than any of them, had a shaved head, a military bearing, an air of enviable erudition, and seemed to be disarmingly willing to learn.
