47th Congressional District candidates Gary DeLong, Alan Lowenthal, Steven Kuykendall, and Sanford Kahn
 
12:42pm |  The buzz is in the air. Promises are being made. Issues are being talked about in overly general fashion. Posters and lawn signs are popping up all over town. Disenfranchised-feeling people are wrongly talking about how your vote doesn’t matter. In other words: it’s election season. And while this is a presidential year, right here at home we’ve got a little gaggle of democratic decisions that may make more difference to the average Long Beacher’s day-to-day life than whether President Obama wins a second term. So go vote! But first, educate yourself.

Here’s a little something to get you started.

47th Congressional District
Since no Democrat has thrown his/her hat in the ring to challenge Sen. Alan Lowenthal for this seat, if it were business as usual the June primary would be a formality for him. (It still is, but we’re building to a point.) But thanks to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act (passed by the voters in 2010), elections in California ain’t what they used to be, and Lowenthal is thrown in with a pair of Republican contenders: current 3rd District Councilmember Gary DeLong, and Steven Kuykendall, who served the 36th congressional district 1999–2001. Los Al Mayor Troy Edgar was in this race, but he and his nearly half-million dollars in cash on hand are taking a shot at the 72nd Assembly District.

Since Lowenthal is — by Capitol Weekly standards, anyway — super liberal (one of eight state senators whose 2009 voting record earned him a perfect 100 on the magazine’s liberalism scorecard), the only drama for now is which of the Republicans faces off with Lowenthal in November. DeLong has picked up an impressive list of endorsers, including former Gov. George Deukmejian, Congressmember Ed Royce, and L.A. County Supervisor Don Knabe. But Kuykendall has backing of former Gov. Pete Wilson, L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley, and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Then there’s Sanford Kahn. You can’t find him listed as a candidate on Ballotpedia, and he hasn’t reported his fundraising to the FEC — which he didn’t have to do, since he has yet to raise $5,000 — but he’s out there advocating a flat 15–17% income tax, increased domestic oil production, and school vouchers plus no new spending on education. If we were handicapping the race, he’d come in as the long shot.

44th Congressional District
We know it’s early, but we’re ready to call this race — at least in terms of which party will win the seat. That’s because the only two candidates vying for the spot are Democrats: current 36th District Rep. Janice Hahn and the 37th’s Laura Richardson. Hahn won the 36th in a nasty run-off election last year, during which an Internet attack ad went as for as to assert that Hahn “helped [gang members] get out of jail so they could rape and kill again.” While Hahn has the endorsement of the state Democratic Party and just about everybody else, Richardson’s got the Teamsters. And despite being the subject of various ethics investigations, Richardson has held one Long Beach-related elected office or another continuously since 2000.

Fun fact: As of January 31, both the Hahn and Richardson campaigns report having debts greater than their campaign war chests, Hahn by about $80K, Richardson by $315K.

33rd Senate District
With only 17% of the district’s constituency registered as Republican, when Bonnie Lowenthal withdrew from this race to seek a third term in the Assembly, this became 50th District Rep. Ricardo Lara’s next job in a district that is (according to a co-editor of nonpartisan elections guide California Target Book) “drawn specifically to favor a Latino.” The endorsements ranging from the UFW to various LGBT organizations to Lowenthal herself and her ex-husband Alan was just icing on the wall.

70th Assembly District
Like her ex, Bonnie Lowenthal gets a “100” from Capitol Weekly, which certainly contributed to her handy victory over Republican Martha Flores Gibson in their 2010 battle for the 54th Assembly District. Will things go differently this time around? Well, as of press time Gibson’s campaign Website has no content, while her Facebook campaign page has 152 likes, which is not quite enough to get it done. But it’s a long time ‘til November. And once Councilmembers Gerrie Schipske and Patrick O’Donnell abandoned their bids for this seat, November is all Gibson needs to think about.

City Council — 2nd District
Ever since she dropped her 2006 reelection bid to the LBUSD to mount a successful campaign for the 2nd District council seat, Suja Lowenthal has been a lightning rod for attention — and not always for reasons that have anything to do with politics.

So as ridiculous as we find online discussion headings like “Hot Janet Ballantyne to Kick Rickety Suja to the Curb?” we find them a good indicator that factors related much more to perception than political acumen may be in play in this race.

Ballantyne, HOA president of 133 The Promenade Walk Corp., says she got into the race because she “generally feel[s] we’re not being represented. And as the old saying goes: If you want something done, you need to do it yourself.”

If you ask Downtown Homeowners Unite, a group strongly favoring Ballantyne, Lowenthal has poorly represented residents in the PBID renewal process. Ballantyne says the process should have been more transparent, but she has other fish to fry. She says the 2nd District “has a growing reputation of not being business-friendly” — e.g., by excessive licensing fees. “The downtown area is a blanket of empty storefronts, [but] the incumbent has been heavily focused on creating ‘window dressing’ to mask the problem.” Ballantyne also calls the upkeep of Lincoln Park “a disgrace” and calls for downtown parking rules and ticket/towing fees “severe. […] In order to entice more people to shop and dine in our community, we need to make the parking experience less painful than what it is today.” Lowenthal is well regarded by many for her strong stances on gay rights and the environment, but this race may come down to whether the “anyone but Suja” sentiment outweighs her incumbency, name-recognition, and the policy successes she’s had — the plastic-bag ban and bicycle infrastructure may be the two most well known — during her six years in office.

That’s exactly why Mike Kamer is in the race. “I have no interest in a political career,” says Kamer, a CSULB student with two years’ experience as a coordinator in the Americorps Volunteer Infrastructure Project program, “and only decided to run when I saw it necessary that voters have an alternative to Ms. Lowenthal in the upcoming election.” Kamer says Lowenthal has “fail[ed] to fully utilize District 2’s city council office for the betterment of the district,” citing her handling of the PBID and the Downtown Plan as examples. “As I see it, a city councilperson’s role should be [as] the voice of their community’s wishes — not as an advocate of their own ideas.”

City Council — District 4
Daryl Supernaw, who’s got his eyes on the 4th District prize, says he made it clear to termed-out incumbent Patrick O’Donnell that Supernaw’s seeking of the seat “was contingent on [O’Donnell’s] running for Assembly, and he confirmed his commitment every time I asked.” Supernaw says this contingency was so “critical [that] I gave him an entire month to change his mind.” So it’s no surprise that Supernaw, chair of the Sustainable City Commission, was “dumbfounded” when O’Donnell abandoned his Assembly bid to seek a third term as a write-in candidate — a move John Watkins, another contender, labels as “not honoring the vote [for term limits] of the people. […] We should ask if this council run is just a fill in for the next two years, until a possible open Assembly run at that time.” Supernaw, a “private-sector guy” who in his capacity as founder of the Atherton Corridor Neighborhood Association spearheaded the project to cover the “Atherton ditch” with a greenbelt at no cost to the City, recently indicated he would have supported using Uplands Oil Fund surplus to fund police and fire (an allocation proposed by Councilmembers Schipske, Gabelich, and Neal).

Watkins had a 29-year career with the LBPD, so it can’t help his chances that O’Donnell’s got the endorsements of the police and fire unions — although getting the nod from the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce’s PAC won’t hurt. As of press time, the most specific action Watkins’s Website suggests he would take if elected is to “do a better job monitoring and regulating” substance-abuse facilities, of which there are several in the 4th District.

City Council — District 6
We have our first winner of our 2012 election cycle, and his name is Dee Andrews. No one filed to challenge the incumbent 6th District councilmember, and Andrews has already been certified the winner. Congratulations, Dee! Early victory party at your house?

City Council — District 8
Now that Rae Gabelich has announced she will not be joining O’Donnell as a termed-out write-in candidate, it’s a three-horse race. And Al Austin is the horse Gabelich is betting on — which means he’s got the endorsements of every 8th District councilmember this millennium, since Robb Webb was already on board. Austin pledges to utilize that institutional knowledge and to continue “pick up where [Gabelich] leaves off. […] When elected, I plan to hit the ground running.”

That ground-hit-and-running will include picking up Gabelich’s drum-banging for more police (“I would like to call for a police academy now within first six months of being elected”), as well as finding creative new ways to deal with funding issues (he supported, for example, the Gabelich-Schipske-Neal proposal to use $6.2 million of the $18.4 million Uplands Oil Fund to this end.) That’s part of the reason he’s got the endorsements of the Long Beach firefighters and police unions.

But Lillian Kawasaki has a resume that includes stints as director with the Water Replenishment Board of Southern California, GM of the Los Angeles Community Development Department, the Small Business Development Center Network Advisory Council, head of the Port of Los Angeles’s Environmental Management Division, and on the Small Business Development Center Network Advisory Council — the totality of which has helped her land endorsements that include Supervisor Don Knabe, the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce’s PAC, ex-Mayor Beverly O’Neill’s, and the Plumbers & Steamfitters Local #494.

And then there’s Gustavo Rivera, an Army veteran and full-time Long Beach City College student who we’d love to tell you more about, but he never got back to us and has no online presence we can find. Call him the dark horse.

LB Community College District, Area 2
Incumbent Robert Uranga is running unopposed, so that’s that.

LB Community College District, Area 4
Incumbent Doug Otto is endorsed by a pair of LBCC faculty unions. But he says people should give him another term “because I’m very good-looking.” He was being funny and not flip when he gave us that answer, but then got serious: “Community-college education is the civil-rights issues of the 21st century. It’s clear that if community-college students don’t succeed, the state won’t succeed.” He says that even in our current climate of “Draconian cuts” to education, the community college must continue to pursue the “Student Success” agenda, as well as “help the local economy in the unique ways that only community colleges can,” such as through the LBCC’s Small Business Development Center.

Otto is challenged by Davina M. Keiser, a math teacher at Wilson High and a member of the Long Beach College Promise Faculty Symposium. “We need to look for every possible way to shift the financial burden away from community-college students,” she says. And Kaiser feels her tenure as treasurer of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, during which she guided the organization from $400K in the red to $250K in the black, is a good indicator that she’s just the person for the job.

LB Unified School District — Area 2
In 2008, the Press-Telegram praised incumbent Felton Willaims’s “fair and balanced approach in dealing with [LBUSD] issues” as “giv[ing him] a strong foundation to effect positive change that will directly benefit the children of our City” — a sentiment currently echoed by CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and CSULB President F. King Alexander. But challenger Ricardo Linarez, currently Councilmember Neal’s field deputy, has scored education endorsements from LBCC Board Trustees Roberto Uranga and Mark Bowen to go along with those of Councilmember Schipske and former Councilmember Tonia Reyes Uranga. Linarez cites a lack of transparency on Williams’s part as one reason we should make a switch. “We hear the superintendants recommending their budget, the Board approves it, and that’s all we hear about it,” he says. “I know the teachers have their representatives at the table, but what about the rest of the community? I know that the rest of the community is interested. […] There is $33 million [in the current LBUSD budget] for contractors and consultants. I would ask: Who are we contracting? Who are these consultants? What are they doing? If we laid off any employees who are doing the same job, that’s unfair. […] I believe we could have looked at the budget and saved some jobs and programs, but the Board was not very responsive to the community.”

Williams, though, says the proof is in the pudding: “If you take a look at the performance of the schools, my schools are doing very well […] showing steady upward movement over last four years.” He also points out that his west-side LBUSD schools received the lion’s share of the $50 million in scholarships. “Our schools are performing very well,” he says, “despite the massive financial cuts we’re having to deal with.”

LB Unified School District — Area 4
While we’re generally not taking positions in this little guide, without equivocation we label this the WORST race on the entire ballot. No, that’s not a comment on the quality of the candidates: it’s that only one of them is actually running. That candidate is Jon Meyer, an incumbent who has the endorsements of, well, just about everybody who’s giving an endorsement. What makes this race so bad is that the other candidate, Naomi Rainey, the current president of the Long Beach chapter of the NAACP, doesn’t want the gig. Within the month of January, Rainey got on the ballot, then did a last-minute about-face. Problem is, she didn’t file the necessary paperwork to have herself removed. And while reports that Rainey’s oversight will cost the City of Long Beach $200,000 are inaccurate — City Clerk Larry Herrera says the City will not spend any money it wasn’t already spending, since the boundaries of the LBCCD Area 4 and LBUSD Area 4 overlap — Rainey’s failure to withdraw means the LBUSD is picking up $176,000 of election costs that would otherwise have been split between the LBCCD and the City.

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It’s warm and fuzzy to declare the act of voting more important than for whom you cast your ballot, but the story of Steve Rocco belies the claim. Without doing any campaigning, the megalomaniacal Rocco got elected to the Orange Unified School District just because he listed himself as a teacher (he wasn’t) and his opponent, a PTA president, honestly designated himself as a park ranger. Over the next four years Rocco often hijacked school-board meetings with rants about “the Partnership,” a sinister organization that was out to kill him; and his insults of colleagues nearly led to fisticuffs on several occasions. That is what you can get when you vote ignorantly.

So don’t. Vote, but be informed.