It is 10 days past the filing deadline for City Council candidates, and School Board member Saundra Davis says she wanted, badly, to join the field.
She said it in early December, late December and again in January as the clock tippy-toed toward the Jan. 11 filing deadline.
She was not being coy, she was deadly serious, Ms. Davis said at yesterday’s Dr. Martin Luther King celebration at the Senior Center.
After a thousand anxious moments were shoehorned into her perspicacious daily life, how did she ultimately decide not to run when all her instincts were in the opposite direction?
“Based on Bill,” Ms. Davis said of her husband of 32 years who was emceeing the Dr. King program.
“Bill said he would not support me because I had just taken on a position as CEO of (Community Centers, Inc., a work-source organization that trains and places).
“He said I am going to be so inundated with that position, how could I do the City Council?”
The Vote Was Close
Did Ms. Davis concur? Or did the husband and wife go back and forth?
Candid as ever, Ms. Davis replied: “We went back and forth.”
For very long?
“Yes, up until the last day for filing. Up to that point, I had spoken to so many people. I had so many phone calls trying to convince me I really needed to be there. They said they needed a voice.
“I agreed. I felt like I needed to be there, too.
“But not at the expense of my husband and my family (including 8 children).”
It Isn’t Getting Better
In the intervening week-plus, has Ms. Davis come down from her high, made peace with the circumstances?
“Not really,” she answered quickly. “If anything, I feel stronger about it.
“I still get phone calls,” she said wistfully. “But the filing period is over…”
Help from on High
There was a lighter side to this intense drama.
The Davis home has been one of thebusiest in Culver City for the 22 years the family has lived here. Strikingly, among the parade of visitors to the Davis home urging the two-term School Board member to run was a Catholic nun.
Surprised only for a moment when he looked up at her on the porch, Mr. Davis dryly inquired, “What is this? Divine intervention?”
