Meg over at the M-M-M-My Pomona blog had an interesting encounter last weekend with a couple of Claremont's prominent citizens: Ellen and Marshall Taylor.
Meg wrote of running into Claremont's Mayor and her husband at the Packing House Wine Merchants wine bar. Meg found the Taylors to be perfectly nice, amiable people:
...a couple came in and struck up a conversation from the other end of the table. Turns out it was Ellen Taylor, the mayor of Claremont, and her husband. We chatted about various things, including whether or not diamonds are a girl's best friend (agreed: NOT), and eventually we got onto the topic of local politics.
Diamonds were not the only thing we agreed on; the Taylors were pleasant folks, easy to talk to. One point of particular agreement was that Claremont city politics is so bitter because the stakes are so small -- it's all about rearranging the deck chairs at the Ritz-Carleton. Whereas Pomona... well, as Ellen Taylor said, that matters.
Meg went on to relate an anecdote Ellen had about former Pomona Councilmember George Hunter. All in all, a friendly exchange with a woman who seemed nothing like the horrid Cookie Monster we've written so much about.
But then, hasn't that always been the central problem of Ellen? It's much like the little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead. One-on-one she can be perfectly charming, particularly in a comfortable, familiar environment like the Packing House Wine Bar, where she is a regular. A few drinks probably doesn't hurt the congeniality factor either, something you could probably say about some of Claremont's other fine leaders as well.
However, get crosswise of Ellen, step between her and something she wants personally or in her public roles, and things get very ugly very quickly. And that, really, has been the heart of the problem with Official Claremont for too long. That Janus-faced combination of niceness coupled with the tendency to quash opposing views on just about anything.
Ellen's good friend, former Claremont Mayor Sandy Baldonado, was very similar. Sandy could be winning and charming when she wanted to be. But she could be terribly arrogant and mean as well, and her real opinions about Pomona (like Ellen's) weren't all that much better than what she thought of Victorville:
Of course, as Meg points out, compared to Pomona's problems, Claremont's are pretty trivial, unless your name is Landrum or you had a house that burned down because of the City's alleged negligence ($17.5 million worth of alleged negligence) or any of a handful of other not-so-trivial issues that have arisen in the recent past.
Meg ends her post by noting that the bit about things being so bitter because the stakes are so small is attributed to Henry Kissinger, who was talking about academic politics. And, now that we think about it, maybe that is precisely Claremont's problem. We are a city run for the most part by academics and wonks (who are really the political equivalents of academics).
So it shouldn't be too surprising to see the public treated at times like a collection of naive, ill-informed undergraduates who need the paternalistic hand of an experienced, worldly, all-knowing college administrator to decide what should be done about this or that issue. Hence the outright condescension a good chunk of the public often faces when it tries to have input on a local issue.
And when it comes to in-fighting and backroom maneuvering, Claremont City Hall and the social network surrounding it aren't really all that different from any college English department. It's close-in combat, with everyone fighting over this or that piece of turf while at the same time nurturing useful alliances (and attending lots of conferences). The perfect place for someone like an Ellen Taylor or a Sandy Baldonado to thrive. Get out the short swords!
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