First of two parts
[img]2789|exact|Stephen Murray||no_popup[/img]
Stephen Murray, Culver City’s candidate for a vacant seat on the West Basin Water District Board, had a premonition how his race was going to turn out.
Overnight, he slept the sleep of a contented contender although he had plenty to say afterward.
He said he did not know the results – he ran third — until a journalist contacted him at 6:45 this morning. When informed, he did not descend into shock.
In a three-way race for a Water Board lately scandal-scarred, Scott Houston of El Segundo, the favorite, won the chair with 46 percent, 11,318 votes to 33 percent for Jeff Ebenstein of West Hollywood, who had 8,230 votes.
Mr. Murray placed third with 5,411 votes for 22 percent.
“We were all very close,” Mr. Murray said. Dollar signs divided them. “In the end, it came down to marketing and outreach budgets,” he said
“My strategy was to target informed, deliberate voters (knowledgeable about Water Board issues and politics), which is only about one-third the size of the regular voter pool,” Mr. Murray said.
To his dismay, he learned that “sympathetic voters are not always the most informed” or loyal.
While he was the only candidate to be endorsed by the Sierra Club, Mr. Murray and his rivals eagerly sought the endorsement of Culver City Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells.
He and she did not team up, however.
“I could not accede to her demands,” Mr. Murray said. “She wanted me to be totally against desalination.”
A well-informed family man, Mr. Murray was and is a sui generis office-seeker. He brings a perhaps deceptive casualness to his campaigns as opposed to hunched-over tenseness, shrillness that is more traditional.
Chasing votes until full-on darkness gripped neighborhoods by 6 o’clock last night, Mr. Murray offered a tightly packaged pitch to residents over the sprawling district.
“My shpiel was, ‘I am Stephen Murray running for the West Basin Water Board. Three of us are running. We are all great guys. And I was endorsed by the Sierra Club. Goodbye.”
(To be continued)
