Election Tomorrow

The polls open at 7am tomorrow, and a select few voters (less than 20% of the eligible registered voters, if the past is any guide) will have the opportunity to vote for two seats on the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education as well as for the Citrus College Board of Trustees District 2 seat.

If you need to know where your polling place is, check the LA County Registrar-Recorder's website and enter your street address and zip code.

There are two candidates for the Citrus College District 2 position:  incumbent Sue Keith and Tracy Rickman.

The three CUSD candidates are, in alphabetical order, Joe Farrell, Hilary LaConte, and Sam Mowbray.   Farrell is the outsider, having been one of the leaders of the No on CL school bond campaign last year.  LaConte is the incumbent, having been board president when the district tried unsuccessfully to pass the $95 million CL bond.  Mowbray is a former CUSD board member and is seeking to return for a fourth term on the school board.

The Daily Bulletin endorsed Farrell and LaConte.  The Claremont Courier, on the other hand, endorsed Mowbray and LaConte.  Judging from candidate lawn signs, campaign supporter lists, and letters to the Courier, the Mowbray-LaConte combo is the Claremont 400's ticket of choice for this election. The Courier and the 400 seem to have given LaConte a pass on the failed bond, which got less than 40% of the vote a year ago.

The Courier and the 400 have also opted to look the other way with regards to LeConte's possible circumvention of the state's Brown Act sunshine law when she was board president in October, 2010 - something that drew criticism from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Public Integrity recently.   This last bit we thought particularly odd for the Courier, which in the past has been something of an advocate for open government.

Through its endorsments the Courier has usually been the most accurate barometer of voter sentiment in Claremont, so we'll see if 2010 CL bond vote or the Brown Act inquiry have much of an effect on the voting. We suspect that it neither issue will matter much at all, but the turnout should tell all.   If CUSD voters are really bothered by enough to overcome their usual apathy, then LeConte might be in some trouble.  

Last Saturday's Courier carried letters from two LeConte-Mowbray supporters, Nancy Tresser-Osgood and Dave Nemer.  Both lamented the low turnouts in past elections (Nemer also had a haiku on the same subject in a prior edition of the Courier).  Tresser-Osgood and Nemer are either terribly naive or just plain ignorant, or both, when it comes to local elections.   The 400's candidates traditionally do best in low-turnout elections.   When election turnout goes over 30%, the vote usually goes against the insider (small "I") candidates.

That's why our City Council elections are in March and the CUSD elections are in November of off-years.   If those elections were changed to general election dates, the turnout would swamp the Claremonster candidates.  In past council elections Llewellyn Miller, Peter Yao, Jackie McHenry, and Corey Calaycay all ran as outsider candidates in what were relatively high-turnout municipal elections.

Similarly, because it was a bond measure, the CL vote had to be held during a general election and was soundly defeated.   Conversely, the City's $12.5 million Measure S Johnson's Pasture bond won because its support base was much wider than just the Claremont 400.  Measure S got over 72% of the vote in November, 2006.

We'll have to wait until after the polls close at 8pm tomorrow night to know the answers.  Check back here to see the final results.

But Will It Play in Peoria?

Claremont High alum Elliot Graham has been nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Wes Woods II over at the Daily Bulletin had an article about Graham's nomination and gave the film editor's background:

Graham, 32, attended Sycamore Elementary School, El Roble Intermediate School and graduated from Claremont High School in 1994. He had "a stopover at Webb" before he attended New York University and graduated in 1999.

He has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle and London since leaving Claremont....

Graham said Claremont is a special place for him.

"I think growing up in old town Claremont, on-and-off college campuses, is a unique and special experience. With its Ivy League-ish, New England setting and tree-covered campuses, it affects the area around it. You meet all sorts of people and cultures who are interested in learning and knowledge."

The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl also wrote about Graham's nomination on his COURIER City Beat blog:

He has also been nominated for an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors.

Graham will be in Claremont this weekend for a friend's engagement party. We'll be sure to catch up with him for a full story to appear in the Wednesday, January 28 edition of the COURIER.

We finally got around to seeing "Milk" a few weeks ago and liked it. As a genre, bio pics tend towards weakness, perhaps because the audience knows the outcome, but "Milk" has much to recommend it. For one thing, Sean Penn's lead performance is remarkable in the way he captures the title character's essence, showing Harvey Milk's transformation and growth from a slightly awkward, closeted gay New York attorney to a leader of a political movement. Penn, who was nominated for a Best Actor award for his work, also manages to convey both the need to be loved and the charisma that so many successful politicians seem to possess.

Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the film has some important lessons to offer to anyone seeking change through politics. Persistence is one of these. Harvey Milk ran for office and was defeated three times before he was finally elected to office as a San Francisco City Supervisor.

More importantly, while being a change agent may get you elected, it won't necessarily make you a good elected official. You have to actually stand for something and offer positive alternatives; and, once in office, you have to govern, which means compromising at times and dealing with your former opponents fairly - something guaranteed to rile up your base supporters. The lesson is that, while it's great fun to lob Molotov cocktails over the Establishment walls, at some point the outsider becomes the legislator and has to lead from within the constraints of a new Establishment.

As if to underscore this, one of the film's key scenes is an exchange between Milk and Art Agnos (played by Jeff Koons). The two are both candidates in the Democratic primary for a State Assembly seat and have just finished a debate. As Agnos walks over to his car, he offers a tip to Milk: “In this town, you gotta give them a reason for optimism, or you’re cooked.”

So true, but it's not just Frisco, Art. It's Anytown, Anywhere. Claremont is no different. A few years ago, enough people wanted change to vote against incumbency. Councilmembers Al Leiga and Karen Rosenthal lost their re-election bids, and Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado likely would have been defeated if they had not stepped down rather than run again.

Llewellyn Miller, Jackie McHenry, Peter Yao, and current councilmember Corey Calaycay all ran as outsiders looking to change the council's direction. Of the first three, only Yao was re-elected, and we'll have to wait until March 3rd to see if people will re-elect Calaycay.

Miller and McHenry lost their second elections, but for different reasons. Miller, who was the first African-American elected to Claremont's City Council, was elected in the wake of the Irvin Landrum shooting, but quickly seemed to be co-opted by the very forces he was elected to change. McHenry, on the other hand, never seemed to learn the Art Agnos lesson about offering optimism, and that cooked her goose. McHenry the Revolutionary didn't quite manage the transition to governance, though to be fair, she also had then-City Manager Glenn Southard and his staff working to undermine her legitimacy.

The trick, as in some many things in life, seems to be balance, and it does seem possible that our City Hall is coming a little closer to finding that sort of moderation. As we've written recently, this election feels different from any in the past eight years, and the current council, even with the often disagreeable Mayor Ellen Taylor running things, has managed to work together in a more open, cooperative way than anytime in recent memory.

There are still times when things become knockdown, drag-out fights, but whereas in the past the Council and its commissions would have railroaded their plans through the decision-making processes, opposition voices have found just a bit more representation with this council than with previous ones. We'll have to see what the voters, who have the final say, think about all this.

Healy Continuing to Provide Kicks - UPDATED

COURIER COVERS HEALY KICK-OFF

Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl had a blog post about Bridget Healy's campaign kick-off event last Sunday. Krickl wrote that a Claremont resident had an interesting question for Healy:

An interesting question came up at Bridget Healy's campaign kickoff party, held in the highly acoustic halls of the Packing House on Sunday.

It came from resident Ken Corhan, whose been following Claremont politics for years.

“There were some tense moments with [city] staff, and you were here for some of that. How would you approach being a council member to avoid those kinds of tensions?” he asked.

Healy responded, “I think the current council has done a really good job of alleviating some of those tensions and working together to improve, and I will continue in that vein. I think it's well prudent when we look at the current council that working together and listening to each other is the key.”

I talked to Corhan after he asked the question. He was referring to the tense political environment after the Landrum shooting in 2001 and what appeared to be an unresponsive city staff to the council's and community's concerns.

He said that he was satisfied with Healy's response to his question. “She seemed to answer the question genuinely,” Corhan said.

Yes, excellent question there Ken. Of course, Krickl missed the fact that Corhan, who is married to former Claremont Human Services Commission Chair Suzanne Hall, has been far more than a mere observer of the local political scene. He and his wife have been intricately wound up in past campaigns for both the City Council and the Claremont Unified School District.

For instance, in 2005, he and Hall donated $200 to the Preserve Claremont campaign, and Hall herself was part of Official Claremont's culture of unresponsiveness as a commission chair at the height of the Glenn Southard regime in Claremont. And, make no mistake about it, Corhan, a graduate of Yale and the Columbia School of Law, is not your average Joe Citizen. In fact, he's counsel to the Lewis Operating Company in Upland, one of the largest real estate companies in Southern California.

(UPDATED, 1/15/09, 8:00am: Most significantly, Corhan's esposa Suzanne Hall is one of 30 people who signed Healy's nomination papers for the council.)

Nothing like having batting practice pitches lobbed to you by your friends in the crowd, eh? It's simply more of the old "River City" tactic the Claremont 400 has employed for years.


STRANGE FRUIT, STRANGER BEDFELLOWS

Not to pick too much on Healy, but her own responsiveness as Claremont's Assistant City Manager left much to be desired in the wake of the Irvin Landrum shooting that so concerned Ken Corhan. Landrum was killed on January 11, 1999. Large-scale protests began very quickly in the wake of the shooting.

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Two weeks after the shooting, on January 26, 1999, the Clarmeont City Council received an agenda report co-authored by Claremont police lieutenant Paul Cooper (our current chief of police) and Bridget Healy. The report was also vetted by the City Attorney and signed by then-City Manager Glenn Southard. That staff report laid out a proposed code of conduct for people wishing to address the City Council during meetings. It also included, under item M, "Threat Assessment," a provision for having public speakers evaluated by mental health professionals:

At the request of a council member, commissioner, committee member or staff member, mental health professionals will be called in to determine the level of threat an individual may be posing. Appropriate action will be taken based on the assessment findings.

Yes, under the staff proposal, a psychologist or social worker would have been on call for council meetings, and the Council or the City Manager could pick anyone they didn't want to hear and have that person detained and referred to the "mental health professional" for some helpful and timely straitjacketing and/or muzzling.

Incidentally, if there is any question as to authorship, the report was marked "P:/bhealy/Admin Policy - Public Mtg Disturb 1-20-99.doc." It represented nothing more than a heavy-handed, police state method of dealing with dissent, in large part by students from the Claremont Colleges, over the Landrum shooting.

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The proposal generated a good deal of controversy and was never enacted, by the way.

That's why it's utterly laughable to see supposed civil libertarians supporting Healy. One of Healy's nominators, for instance, is Scripps College Vice-President and Dean of Faculty Cecilia Conrad. Conrad, along with her husband Llewellyn Miller, were among those most moved to action by the Landrum shooting. You may remember that Miller ended up being the first African-American elected to the Claremont City Council as part of the community's reaction to the shooting. Yet here Conrad is, ten years later, supporting one of the people most responsible for the City's shoddy handling of that crisis.

The apparently infinite capacity of those smart, well-credentialed people who run Official Claremont to support contradictory positions and to bury the past continues to amaze us. It has nothing to do with what's right or just and everything to do with what one's friends tell one to do.

Local politics truly makes the strangest bedfellows.


MORE OF THAT HEALY TREATMENT

Finally, we recall that back in 2000, there used to be a website called ClaremontCA.com. It was a sort of Insider long before there was an Insider and was staffed by real, not digital, people.

In August, 2000, not only was the City having to deal with the aftermath of the Landrum shooting, but they received some bad PR over City Attorney Sonia Carvalho's reported role in helping the city oppose what later became the successful Measure A anti-conflict of interest initiative. The city decided to hold a press conference to clarify what they thought were some misperceptions about Carvalho's role in the matter.

ClaremontCA called the city and asked to attend the press conference. Their website recorded what happened:

Informed that there was to be a news conference Wednesday, ClaremontCA.com called the city manager's office for time and place information. Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, a bureaucrat paid $105,000 per year to represent the city, told ClaremontCA.com that the meeting was "only for the invited press." When cautioned that such an arrangement was improper, Ms. Healy responded, "Whatever". When asked to include ClaremontCA.com in the meeting she refused to assist. "There's nothing more I can do for you". When asked if ClaremontCA.com would be allowed into the meeting Ms. Healy laughed and said "You'll just have to go and find out for yourself". When pressed to extend the invitation to ClaremontCA.com Ms. Healy hung-up the phone in mid-sentence.

Can’t we all just get along, Bridget?

Indeed. Which makes Tony Krickl's closing sentence all the more deliciously ironic:

Her supporters [including Ken Corhan] would say that having Healy on the council is bringing the best from the past into Claremont's future.