One is in.

If the other is in, the place is called limbo.

Dr. Loni Anderson took out papers this afternoon at the City Clerk’s office for her first-time candidacy.

But School Board member Saundra Davis, who implied last week that if she was going to run for Council she would sign up early, sounded less certain this afternoon.

For those of us who enjoy weighing words and assessing nuances, she seems torn between running for a Council seat — mostly, perhaps, because the seat is there — and living out her real dream.

Which Way Do You Lean?

The Council is tempting because it is generally regarded as the big brother of the two electoral bodies in Culver City.

There never lived a politician or normal non-politician who did not aspire to expanding his powers. (Actually, my second wife is an exception to this principle. She started out envisioning herself as the most powerful woman on earth and tried to expand on that.)

Sacramento long has been on Ms. Davis’s mind. Friends say the Legislature is the only true destination for her heart.

Nearly everyone I know (except for the formerly fetching former Mrs. Noonan) was taught to obey his or her heart. (She was taught to obey no one.)

Comfort Levels

Ms. Davis never has struck me as being genuinely at home when moving around City Hall. She has seemed more like a visitor.

Still recovering from surgery less than two months ago, Ms. Davis said she has not made up her mind because she has not yet met with her only consultant. “I have not had a chance to sit down with (husband) Bil,” she said.

She rarely attends City Council meetings. So what. Why should she when school matters and family consume her time.

I buy what new School Board member Steve Gourley hammered away at during his recent campaign. He said that attending weekly City Council meetings did not narrow his learning curve in the 1980s when he won election.

Now Where Is That Map?

For the sake of cartographers in Newspaperland, Dr. Loni’s heart is really in this run.

She and her heart have had a number of conversations in recent years. They always ended with an agreement she probably would run when the time felt right.

Dr. Loni’s timetable was, perhaps unexpectedly, kick-started on a night in late June when she was sitting on the Community Advisory Committee for the redevelopment of South Sepulveda Boulevard.

The huge rebuild was at an impasse.

Both sides had both feet in a fat bucket of molasses. Residents and merchants wanted to greatly downsize the grand design. The developer Bob Champion was shifting from foot to foot. In the midst of deciding whether and what he should decide, Mr. Champion was abruptly undercut by a rival developer. End of game.

Whose Turn Is It?

Nobody seemed able to move, to make a sensible decision. Not sounding like the amateur she insists she is, Dr. Loni spoke up at a community meeting. She said to resolve the knotty problem that seemed to have no way out, City Hall should produce a General Plan. This would provide a blueprint for how to proceed on South Sepulveda.

“Huh?” was the first response. The impact was not figured out quickly.

The rest of the committee, dazed, went along with Dr. Loni, possibly without realizing that in one unassuming swing, South Sepulveda had detoured into a graveyard.

Everything Changed

The resulting response to her watershed act accelerated the flow of her own competitive juices. If she had been hesitant before, now she was eager to go for a Council seat. Dare she admit that? No, not publicly.

When she stepped to the counter of the City Clerk’s office this afternoon to become the fourth Council candidate in two days to pull papers, she felt a refreshing jolt of energy.

“I was thinking about what it would be like to go from a very private person to a non-private person,” Dr. Loni said.

Over the coming 111 days, she will find out.