The results are official. Bryan “Bubba” Fish has been certified to take over Councilman Eriksson’s seat. Monday, December 9th, he will be sworn in and return Council to a progressive 3-2 majority: McMorrin, Puza and Fish vs. Vera and O’Brien. Fish stands for defunding police, eliminating “sweeps”, and eliminating car lanes.
So what happened? How did our candidates lose? What can we expect next? How can we brace ourselves?
First off, Fish ran an aggressive ground game campaign. He was knocking on doors practically full time since June. But more so, he was misrepresenting himself. When people confronted him about the MOVE project downtown, and the lawsuit to prevent Council from bringing back the second car lane, he denied it. He ran on “safe streets”, implying he’s for public safety, but avoided any mention of defunding the police – except among his supporters. He claimed support with Dan O’Brien and Akiba rabbi Zach Shapiro – something they both made public statements rebuking.
Yasmine did the same, invoking “safety” and a picture of her with her police officer father. She also had the benefit of incumbency under a successful Council in which she was the minority.
Our whole campaign was playing catch-up with voters, explaining to them what would really happen if he were elected to the Council majority. He and Yasmine resisted our efforts by characterizing us as evil corporate landlords, while they pushed their presence in precincts like Fox Hills – locked down buildings where it’s hard to reach out to voters.
The takeaway here is voters are not aware of what they voted for. As the saying goes, a lie goes halfway around the world, while the truth is still tying its shoelaces.
What should we beware? What can we expect?
- The second car lane downtown will probably be removed again – with a disturbing legal precedent to boot. We should see other lane closures as well.
- The transient camps are coming back. Without sweeps, there’s no enforcement of sidewalks. We can build transients the Taj Mahal, but if they don’t want to move, a progressive Council won’t touch them – or their belongings.
- We can expect defunding CCPD to come back on the table. The good news is, as a simple 3-2 majority, they have to wait for the normal budget process in June.
- Incremental Infill is coming back – meaning 4-8 units on any lot, depending on their creative interpretation of SB9.
- Expect more of the two-hour activist diatribe on Gaza, and this Council claiming it represents Culver City residents. We should brace for this new Council to make anti-Israel resolutions.
A lie may be faster, but the arc of justice is long. We will prevail. Here’s how we brace ourselves.
- The R-word: Recall. We mention this to manage expectations, not to make a suggestion. Recalls are made specifically for those who come in under false pretenses to do unpopular things. But they are extremely difficult – we’d need 20% of voter signatures (~5800 valid) to spur a special election. That’s twice what we needed for our initiative.
- That means we need to start with groundwork – we need to tell Council we will hold them accountable if they enact policies they didn’t run on and weren’t voted in to do. Then we need to keep tabs on their performance, regarding the above policies.
- To do this, we need to make the threat credible, or they will call our bluff and ignore us. We have the experience of getting our initiative on the ballot, and others have the experience of the Fisch/Lee recall attempt. But to make this threat stick, we need a professional effort with its own PAC and fundraising. PCC will not support any recall effort that doesn’t have an associated PAC with proper funding.
- Election analysis showed that we were victorious in the park neighborhoods – even Tellefson Park area, which has a lot of multifamily renters. It was neighborhoods like Fox Hills and Arts District, where we aren’t as present or voters are behind locked doors, where Bubba prevailed. That means we need to extend our outreach. “Did you know you voted for x/y/z? Would you have voted for Yasmine and Bubba if you knew they were going to do these things?” Based on that, we can gauge and build support for a recall.
Constituents concerned about these issues should contact the new Council and express their opinions as soon as possible. Speaking during the inaugural Council meeting would be an auspicious time to do this.
When Bubba came to my door I told him to get lost. A ccpd office told me Morron was an idiot and same for Puza. They need to recalled immediately as they are misrepresenting themselves and spending OUR money. Let’s get CC back to where it was…a nice place to live without buckling sidewalks; potholes in the street and homeless smelling up the streets.