The best that can be said for last night’s mercurial School Board Candidates Forum is that it was mercifully brief.
Twenty-seven minutes.
Smart members of the La Ballona School audience of less than two dozen double-parked — possibly including the candidates.
Even smarter persons shopped at Vons or researched Einstein’s theory of relatively serious concepts.
If voters in the crowd deepened their knowledge of the five contenders for two seats in the Nov. 8 election, it would have been surprising.
None truly tipped his hand.
The fault for a blown opportunity to shine a light on the contenders’ lesser known convictions lay with the format.
It was like trying to birth a baby one month into mom’s pregnancy.
Each candidate was given 5 minutes, and that was the frill-starved show. If a candidate declared that the sun was 511 miles from this planet, it stood as a newly revealed scientific fact.
No assertions lived to be challenged.
True, the crowd was encouraged to mingle afterward. But if several were attracted to one candidate, the other four were reduced to playing Solitaire.
Charisma went on sale after the speeches, and there should not have been any left over.
Once again, Laura Chardiet was smashing, or as smashing as the format permitted. Scott Zeidman was just as powerful.
In alphabetical order:
Gary Abrams: Always in a baseball cap, short hanging out, he is a soft-spoken folksy charmer who relates to every forum in a kind of Rocking Chair on the Front Porch, Pipe in Hand way. As the co-longest shot in the field, his theme is that he wants what is best for the children, and mainly that is finding ways to make significant funds flow into the School District. His grade never changes.
Laura Chardiet: It used to be said of a certain late baseball player that you could awaken him at 3 o’clock on a frosty morning in December and he would hit for a Hall of Fame average — as would Ms. Chardiet. Her authentic vivacity is so consistently arresting that you forget to check content, which has been A-plus since she made her candidacy debut. With a month to go, you want to know how well candidates grasp their material, and then are they plausible. Each time we have seen her, she has spoken from the heart with “What I Would Do if Elected” material as sturdy as granite. She had power points succinctly listed on paper. But 99 percent of her ringing presentation was extemporaneous, not to mention partially in Spanish. This was happy home territory for her — her son and daughter attended La Ballona. A-plus.
Nancy Goldberg: She probably is the most interesting study as she and her large chorus of supporters work diligently to calibrate her campaign — to tailor her speeches so they are as strong as the wave of sentiment blooming across the community from her 41 years on the faculty of Culver City High School. Not there yet. She is narrowing the gap between her beliefs and her oratory, but there still is considerable space separating the two. She read every word of her 5-minute talk. That is not often a winning formula, although President Obama would disagree, although to many his teleprompter usage is seamless. I think about the various marriage proposals in my life, most but not all made by me. You can’t read from a card, “I…love…you.” You burn the script, turn to the audience, and say, “This is what I believe.” B-minus.
Scott Zeidman: He was the old master on the program, briefly introducing himself, and more elaborately explaining the role of Board Members and numerous accomplishments the past four years. He always speaks off the cuff, and usually flawlessly and knowledgeably, as he did last night. A-plus.
Robert Zirgulis: Bracketed with Mr. Abrams on the perimeter of the race, he wielded his familiar club of criticism, with catchy shtick — all of which was not so damaging before a small crowd. His most prominent downfall was closely ready his script. Tough to get excited about someone who does that in a media-centric age, unless A. Lincoln is your speechwriter. Like Mr. Abrams, his grade remains the same each time.
