While new Culver City Mayor Andy Weissman celebrated a stunner this morning, the dazzling summit of his accomplished political career, and the defeated candidate Gary Silbiger was understandably nursing dazed, bitter feelings, pallbearers were lowering into the ground the myth that the mayoralty is just a hollow position defined by toy-level ceremonial duties anyone could perform.
The outcome was branded an upset because Mr. Silbiger, as Vice Mayor for the past year, had anticipated that his colleagues would elect him to the top job in his farewell year to politics since, in recent seasons, that has been the most common path.
Tradition dictated the unofficial but virtually sacred policy that would elevate him to Mayor, he avidly argued.
Sources said the Vice Mayor was so confident of winning the Mayor’s job that months ago he organized a committee to closely design a tight Silbiger-style agenda for his riding-out year in office.
A Cheering Section
Attempting to leave no corner of strategy or tactics unaddressed, Mr. Silbiger sought to ratchet up the voting mood on the dais to a level of irresistibility. He brought in 14 ardent supporters — the only 14 people to speak on the subject — to not only tip but spill the balance in his favor.
However, the strikingly uncommon display of unswerving affection did not even touch the vote. Mr. Weissman and his supporters contended that Mr. Silbiger already has been Mayor once during his present four-year term. The eventual winner said the philosophy of the City Council always has been that the halo should be placed on each member’s head one time before one member is elected Mayor a second time. Under that system, three current members, Chris Armenta, Mehaul O’Leary and Mr. Weissman, would have been in line ahead of Mr. Silbiger.
The hoary fairy tale that the Mayor’s job is a plastic honor mindlessly passed up and down the dais by the City Council only is true for 364 days a year — when the guys are not voting and can speak with charitable nobility. On the 365th, sometimes the knives come out because, you see, that is Election Night among Council members, the final Monday in April.
How Vote Was Divided
Last night’s breathtaking vote, whose rumored contours had been making the rounds for days, formed the hardest, most inflexible demarcation line this side of climate change, 3 to 2.
The flecks of ferocious finagling and rhetorical roastings that choked the air during the runup to the vote portend a difficult year of governance.
Never mind that the parameters of overheated partisanship have been in place since last year. In this torrid environment, the greenhouse gas emissions crowd would have gagged on their carrot sticks.
Even the dimmest, most timid purveyor of hometown politics knew that Mr. Silbiger would enter this most fragile fray of his career two-thirds along to victory with two cinch votes, that of his most loyal friend and ally Mr. Armenta and his own.
Those same dim types equally understood that Mayor Scott Malsin and Mr. Weissman, who have not often been on the Silbiger side of a vote, entertained different ideas.
That put the key to the evening in the willing, energetic, almost flying hands of the man who has been in this delicate pose since being elected a year ago, the irrepressible Irishman, Mr. O’Leary.
A Onetime Coalition
Curiously, earlier in the maiden year of the three freshmen on the Council, the infectiously enthusiastic Mr. O’Leary almost instinctively joined the populist duo of Mr. Silbiger and Mr. Armenta on community hot-button subjects. But the reliability of the alliance gradually unraveled for reasons that will be explored later.
In one of several instances of towering irony last night, Mr. O’Leary opened the nominating process by identifying Mr. Weissman, the outgoing Redevelopment Agency chair, as Mayor.
For the next moment, it seemed that time stopped. There was a shocked bridge of silence. For the briefest interlude, it appeared that Mr. Weissman, a consummate politician with, so far, inerrant instincts, was going to be voted in by acclamation. It has happened, but not this time.
More than the weather or the calendar, Mr. O’Leary’s — somewhat anticipated, but also feared — line sealed Mr. Silbiger’s fate, and thereafter, the rhetoric from the runnerup side turned broken-glass icy.
For both common and separate reasons, not only Mr. Silbiger but Mr. Armenta, departed the arena with heads bowed in deep disappointment last night.
Mr. Armenta’s multi-layered disappointment branched in several directions, the oddest being that he cast the only negative vote in being elected Vice Mayor.
Why, still was not clear this morning.
Enduring a Reversal
He indicated that he starchly believed principle had been betrayed and tradition had been breached, with vigor, when his friend failed to be elected Mayor.
He nearly resembled a tire that suddenly had gone flat. On non-Election Nights, he and Mr. O’Leary stage a horse race as to which is more relentlessly effusive and optimistic.
Not at all this time.
In his sweeping nomination of Mr. Weissman, Mr. O’Leary seemed to attempt to sensitively, or strategically, salve Mr. Armenta’s disappointment by suggesting him to be the coming year’s Chair of the Redevelopment Agency. Mr. O’Leary reasoned that since the chairmanship of the Agency was Mr. Weissman’s springboard to the Mayor’s chair, perhaps a year of seasoning in the Agency gun-seat could pave a direct road to the Mayorship for Mr. Armenta next April.
No sale. Also no explanation was forthcoming from Mr. Armenta beyond the succinct and sterile references to principle.
Fifty percent confident and fifty percent scramblingly hopeful, Mr. Silbiger entered Council Chambers at nightfall relying on the strength of an uneven oral tradition to propel him directly from sub-Mayor into the boss’s chair.
How It Came About
In possibly the most remarkable display of one man’s desire for the position in the history of the Council, Mr. Silbiger turned out the aforementioned gallery of fans who portrayed the would-be Mayor as Culver City’s only qualified and only deserving candidate.
Before the eyes of this somewhat disbelieving audience, Mr. Weissman, 59 years old, the dean of working politicians in this town, engineered an unorthodox upset that students of political history will be studying and arguing about decades away.
“I did not have any grand strategy for winning,” he said.
Mr. Weissman’s brilliance, of course, was in capturing the vote of Mr. O’Leary.
“I just thought that Council members who have not been Mayor should have a chance before one of us is elected for a second time,” he said.
“Mehaul agreed with me.” .
Those four words elected the next Mayor.
The fascinating story of how the shrewd Mr. Weissman outflanked the possibly complacent Mr. Silbiger is a tale that will be colorfully interpreted and kneaded in the coming years before it is allowed to enter the virginal minds of schoolboys who tell their teachers they want to grow up to be politicos.
Won’t Anyone Take the Job?
By the end of a fast-paced hour last night, the City Council had skidded into discount mode.
The Council was beginning to resemble one of those desperate, teeth-baring, red-faced auto dealers who is ready to kiss consumers and hand them a juicy cheeseburger if only they will reduce his inventory.
After making his convincing — but rejected — sales pitch to Mr. Armenta about accepting the position of Chair of the Redevelopment Agency to get on the fast track to the Mayorship, Mr. O’Leary ended up with the title.
Meaning that next April, he may be known as Mayor O’Leary.
They couldn’t give away the job of Vice Chair of the Agency, either.
Mr. Silbiger resolutely rejected the offer, which is unprecedented or rarer than the Hope-and-Change Diamond.
Scott Malsin, the outgoing Mayor, must have been holding an invisible mop in his hand because he volunteered to clean up the evening’s mess, and accepted the Vice Chair title.
