I would love to convince Steve Gourley to re-run for the School Board this summer and autumn.
Unless he has an undisclosable personal reason, he should run and win because he has much more to contribute to the community.
At 61 years old, he is as vigorous as a teenager.
In a way, he is Culver City’s version of Newt Gingrich. An uncommonly brainy idea generator, he misfires perhaps more than he is willing to confess but so what?
For the past four years, as a latter-day Batman and Robin — we aren’t saying which is which — Mr. Gourley and Scott Zeidman, perfectly twin-matched, have brought a double-barreled muscular maturity to the Board that should be applauded.
They are driving the bus, and have from the moment of election. Passivity is the burden of others, not theirs’.
Everybody else on the School Board will be a passenger as long as Batman and Robin retain their driver’s licenses.
Mr. Zeidman has two sons in school, Mr. Gourley doesn’t. That distinction helps to bring together two sparks-flying spirited perspectives of different flavors that have benefited the School District.
They Come Bearing Gifts
They are both smart guys with quite different, almost opposite, but complementary personalities and styles that confidently steer the School Board.
They remind me of an opposite-type married couple. Often you will notice that one is handsome or beautiful while the other would lose a contest at Westminster. You wonder what possibly could have drawn them together.
As a team, Batman and Robin, nearly father and son, have been a strikingly effective force. Separately, they are all right but not as powerful. This is a team that should not be broken up for four more years.
You may criticize their stewardship of the 9½-month Superintendent Search, but for entertainment value and brilliance of outcome, their stage direction was Hitchcockianly brilliant. Don’t forget, this is part show business, too, friends.
Not every elected official should act as funless as an accountant.
When you are dealing with back-to-back overmatched chaps in the governor’s mansion, somebody on a dour-faced School Board needs a sense of humor. Mr. Gourley, the King of Tarts, and Mr. Zeidman, Doctor of Diplomacy, pack five peoples’ worth.
Counting in a way that took me well beyond one hand, I calculated that officially four candidates are on the train so far for November’s two-seat School Board election, two who have acknowledged and two who haven’t.
For the benefit of the community, Mr. Gourley should expand the field to five.
