Would it really have made much difference if state Sen. Curren D. Price Jr. had remained in Sacramento yesterday afternoon and skipped his early evening Town Hall at the Senior Center?
Before answering, it must be reported that Sen. Price’s rare Culver City sighting attracted a much-larger-than- anticipated crowd that sent Senior Center staffers scurrying for extra furniture.
The turnout was irresistibly enthusiastic. They were engaged. And they were appreciative that their state senator was visiting in their backyard.
Unfortunately, they were served a stale piece of cake by the bland Sen. Price, who offered an unfocused, imprecise agenda of gobbledygook subjects.
An impresario he is not. An extremely nice man in private life, the senator acted as if he wanted to be someplace else.
Politicians usually are concerned about takeaways after speaking, the most lasting memory the audience will take home. The pickings on this night were bare. Unless they want to remember a garbled agenda presented incoherently.
Sen. Price, a tall, striking figure, opened with 15 bone-dry minutes of statistics on the state budget, and the talks that open next week. It would have been surprising if one member of the working-class audience had comprehended or cared about a single item, such as whether 5.1 percent, amounting to $10.1 million, may be sliced from one arcane agency. Or it may not. Or more or less may be chopped from its bloated budget.
Set for a 6 o’clock start, the dinner hour for many, a steady stream of voters poured into the room as Sen. Price droned through a pile of irrelevant data with two microphones that occasionally worked.
His idea of entertainment in the early portion of the program was to parade a bevy of overweight, middle-aged state-type employees to the microphone. They were to spend 2 minutes trumpeting the virtues of their agency — for what purpose no one knew. Not one public speaker emerged from among them.
Sen. Price is a relief pitcher. He was elected nine months ago to fill out the final year and a half of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s term.
Since he already is up for re-election in November, the cautious senator gave responses to the hungry and friendly crowd, but none were substantive.
He did not attempt, for example, to answer a question about whether he had ever voted against a tax increase. That would be a red-meat query for a politician with imagination. But the senator did not try to humor the questioner or parry with him.
Still, it appeared most of the crowd was content when leaving, likely for one reason:
A number had asked intensely personal questions. Sen. Price offered to meet with the each one in private after the Town Hall.
Few questions were of general interest, creating a twin partner for Sen. Price’s portion of the program.
