As a sign of his seriousness about “probably” re-running for the City Council in two years, Marcus Tiggs has been unusually public in examining reasons he finished below last month’s three winners.
He appeared on an internet program last Thursday – interviews being an indicator that a sixth-place finisher has a still has a competitive future.
In the four-week examination process, Mr. Tiggs said he has gained clarity.
“What I learned is that there is not one magic bullet to explain what happened,” he said.
“It would be a lot easier if my message had been off, and I just focused on that.”
Here is one potential explanation for his loss.
As a bankruptcy attorney, the perhaps natural overwhelming theme of the Tiggs campaign was a laser focus on City Hall’s revenues, incoming and outgoing.
More specifically, critics said that Mr. Tiggs spent too much time pounding away at Measure Y, the 2012 half-cent sales tax that was strongly approved by voters for 10 years. Implying that he may have accented a single-note campaign, here is where critics believe the candidate went off the rails:
While the subject was valid enough, Measure Y will not expire for six more years – too great of a distance into the future for busy voters to comprehend or fret about.
Explaining his setback “would be a lot easier,” Mr. Tiggs said, “if my message had been off, and I could focus on that.
“It is not just that, though. It is a combination of stuff.”
Turning to one of the fireworks issues of the late campaign, Mr. Tiggs, in part, attributed his next-to-last finish to progressive opponents. “They were so well organized,” he said, perhaps admiringly. He may be a Democrat “but I am not part of that group.
“Obviously, I have to do some soul-searching and some tweaks on my end.
“I should be more organized, too.”
Thinking further, he speculated that the seven-way race may have been an anomaly.
“Maybe we had a lot of bleedoff from the national elections,” Mr. Tiggs said — without reaching the finish line in his ongoing introspection.
Marcus can take comfort in the fact that it’s not that the others were more organized ,it’s that they were part of the “democratic club machine”. His record of public service, and knowledge of the city was no match for the fact that Culver City has it’s very own version of the “Gang of Four”. The fact that no one is willing to call it out is because they will freeze anyone who does not agree or support their candidates. Scott Wyant and Goran Erikson experienced the same treatment. Anyone who is curious who those people are just need to go to the Democratic Club meetings and really listen to who and what is being promoted.