For sheer attention, Mr. Malsin will be sharing the stage with Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger.
Following the City Council’s traditional one-year rotation system, Mr. Silbiger, the only pure Progressive, is scheduled to be elected mayor on the first night of his second four-year term.
Since the community has seen little of Mr. Silbiger, a Fairfax High School graduate, as a leader, the early weeks of his tenure will be closely watched.
The single certainty is that he will represent a departure from Mr. Vera, who favored folksy, rules-bending collegialty in conversations with the public.
The freshly scrubbed Mr. Malsin and the more regal Mr. Vera are strongly dissimilar, and this alone is expected to blow more fragrant, less pungent, winds through the musty old Council Chambers.
He Loved the Process
The Chambers may only be a decade old. But as Mr. Vera reluctantly marches out of City Hall and closer to the diamond anniversary of his birth, there was ever an atmosphere of great longevity — and authority — when he sat down on the dais.
As a political tactician, he craved every daunting, methodical step of process, the more dramatic the better.
Oratorical flamboyance hallmarked his style and his activities. His occasionally volcanic voice volleyed off the vast walls of the Chambers. Declaring his intentions with a sweeping flourish was by far his favorite tonic.
Far more compact in style, communication and philosophy is the new City Councilman.
More contemporary in his approach, Mr. Malsin emphasizes results over methodology.
A kid, by comparison, in his middle forties, Mr. Malsin has lived in Culver City for fourteen years, meaning his resume as a genuine neighborhood take-charger spans thirteen years, eleven months.
In the days since his election on April 11, in the tradition of new Council members, he has made the rounds of City Hall, meeting with everyone significant.
For a regular visitor to City Hall, who knews the place as well as the employees, it was not really get-acquainted time. From his years of activism, “I knew almost every person I met with.”
Where Mr. Vera regularly stressed his independence, brashly spurning the contours of collaboration, Mr. Malsin portrayed himself throughout the recent campaign as a flexible, innovative compromiser.
Friends cast him as a common-sense politician.
He Won’t Change
Advancing from the more casual, less visible environment of serving on the Planning Commission to spotlighted Cit6y Council member is likely to call for adaptation by Mr. Malsin.
To what degree is not yet clear.
“When you become part of a group, you become part of the group’s dynamics,” he said. “That is life.”
The single characteristic he kept returning to on the campaign trail was his clarity — both in his personal and professional lives.
His vision for Culver City, he told voters, is unclouded and uncluttered.
As a Planning Commission member, he said clarity informed his actions. “When we came to a decision,” Mr. Malsin said, “we tried to provide clear direction to staff so that they never had a question about what we intended.”
Following his introduction, Mr. Malsin plans a brief response.
Calm and unruffled, he doesn’t expect his well-imprinted profile to change in new surroundings. “I know who I am and what I believe in,” he said. “Each City Council member has only one vote. The idea is to be persuasive and agreeable.”
Regarding his view on the transition at the top of City Hall, when Jerry Fulwood is expected to move, quietly, from Chief Administrative Officer to City Manager, Mr. Malsin was cautious.
This and other changes dictated by the victory of Measure V, the Charter Reform proposition, on Election Day, “will be sorted out over the next couple of months. Some changes will be simple. Some will require more consideration.”
At bottom, said Mr. Malsin, “it still is too early.”
