Denied a chance to run for the City Council two years ago by a still unexplained technical glitch, Mr. O’Leary said he is motivated to run all the harder this time. Fashionable in a mid-length black coat, he strode into the City Clerk’s ground-floor office late in the morning to pull papers.
Instantly, there is a race.
With more than two weeks remaining before the Friday, Jan. 13 filing deadline, Mayor Albert Vera and Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger – the two Councilmen up for re-election – may be facing more stubborn opposition than they had anticipated.
What makes the prospects for the April 11 showdown more tantalizing than usual is that the incumbents will be pitted against two fresh-faced young men who never have run before. The Westside activist Scott Malsin is a member of the Planning Commission and Mr. O’Leary has owned the popular Washington Boulevard pub, Joxer Daly.
Both men are bounding with energy and ambition. Undeniably, they will give Culver City voters a clear choice.
The personal life of Irish-born Mr. O¹Leary took a sharp upward turn on Sept. 17 when he married Susan Mangunsong, his girlfriend for almost the last three years.
"An American girl born in Indonesia," she is a labor and delivery nurse, she met her husband-to-be when she visited his pub. He was on a date elsewhere
in the pub’s main room at the time. But he excused himself long enough to make Ms. Mangunsong’s acquaintance. The attraction was warm and immediate.
"When Susan came in, I asked my date to wait a moment," Mr. O’Leary recalled. "I told her I would be right back. I had to go look at something. After introducing myself, I told Susan that I couldn¹t stay right now but I would love for her to come back. She did."
The rest is connubial history.
Mr. O¹Leary¹s intended path to City Hall began to form two and a half years ago, on July 27, ’03, "when I became a citizen of this great country."
For the ceremony at the Sports Arena just south of downtown Los Angeles, Mr. O’Leary engaged a videographer to record each step on one of the jubilant
days of his then thirty-eight-year life. Taking no chances, he registered to vote that very day, and he has the film to prove it.
By then Mr. O’Leary had lived in Culver City for four years. He had magically fallen in love with the community, and he knew that he wanted to run for the City Council. First, though, the Irishman had to become a citizen.
By his account, he meticulously followed every rule for qualifying as a candidate for office.
Three months later, when he arrived to vote in the special election to recall Gov. Gray Davis, he admits that he should have seen a warning sign. A precinct worker told Mr. O’¹Leary his name was not on the registration list.
"That was a red flag I should have noticed," he says. He was allowed to vote anyway.
A few weeks later, when he came to City Hall to file for the City Council election of ¹04, Mr. O¹Leary, to his shock, was informed he was not registered to vote. One of the rudimentary qualifying requirements for candidates is that they must be registered to vote a minimum of thirty days prior to filing.
During the heated gymnastics that followed, Mr. O’Leary could not convince the City Council or anyone else at City Hall to waive this rule because of the unique conditions surrounding his case. Even though he possessed filmed proof that he was registered, no official budged.
On the day that he took out papers for April’s election, Mr. O’Leary firmly planted his foot near a fountain in front of City Hall. "I am back," he said succinctly.
