With just under a hundred days until the municipal election, this is when local campaigns typically kick into gear. Fundraisers and forums all start to crowd the calendar. But at a time when most of us are having an allergic reaction to the word “unprecedented,” another one has landed.
The Culver City Democratic Club, the oldest such entity of its kind and one with a large footprint among local voters, sent out an invitation to the candidates who had filed to run for office, to be a part of a video forum that would run on the club’s website. The club has historically been a bell-weather for voters in Culver City, who tend heavily towards being registered as Democrats.
One candidate showed up. One.
That’s unprecedented.
From the Democratic Club leadership, “[Out of] five potential candidates, Vanessa Martin has chosen to not run, Kimberley Griffin did not answer our emails, and Chad B. Smith showed up for the planned forum but declined to join, explaining he was still deciding about running. While Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin had initially agreed to participate, she withdrew at 5PM Monday, two hours before the event was scheduled to begin. This left only former Mayor Thomas Small.”
Current Mayor Freddy Puza, who is running for re-election, had already been endorsed by the club at a previous meeting, and so was not included for the panel.
While Martin (no relation, but an admirable community activist) of course has the option to change her mind, Smith is not making a good showing on not changing his. How much more of the next three months he will spend before he decides to fish or cut bait is up to him; but not a strong sign for someone running for office.
For Griffin’s campaign not to respond shows that someone is asleep at the switch. The clock is ticking, and if you don’t connect with the voters, you have no chance to get votes.
It’s also shocking for Wisnosky Stehlin to throw away an opportunity like this in a campaign. As someone who has already run, she has to know that discounting voters ahead of the election becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can’t win if you don’t play.
Maybe this is ‘quiet quitting.’ Perhaps the ugly mob at the council meetings – one of whose leaders ran for council years ago and did not succeed – are just too unhinged for anyone to want to win the seat on the dais. The still-churning propaganda excoriating the abomination of a protected bike lane is like a mindless mob with pitchforks and torches insisting that no sandboxes be installed on a playground. (The decision to approve Better Overland was unanimous on the first vote; no amount of screaming on social media changes that.) Maybe they don’t want to have to deal with that.
The mob has successfully driven at least one City Hall employee in Traffic Management on to greener pastures in another city, where they don’t have to look at an inbox filled with insanity.
But electeds don’t get to walk through that door.
If candidates felt that the Democratic Club voters were folks they did not want to talk to, then perhaps they can attend a few council meeting and keep a close tally on how much council business involves talking with – and listening to – people who don’t agree with your perspective. Much of what a seat on the council requires isn’t fun. Or easy. And you don’t get to decide if or when you show up.
Whoever is advising these candidates needs to be fired, yesterday. The days of ‘we are running for office because our friends want us to’ are long over, and anyone stepping up for this job needs to be up for it.
Showing up is about as basic as it gets.
Judith Martin-Straw
