There are three open seats and seven candidates running for Culver City Council in 2024, all running as Democrats. Respectfully, one of these candidates has no institutional support and is not likely to make a meaningful impact. If you aren’t the type of locally involved politico who listens to public comment at city council meetings, scours social media, and reads club newsletters and small town rags then I wouldn’t fault you for having trouble differentiating the six others. The Culver City Democratic Club, the original political club in town, has endorsed Mayor Yasmine Imani-McMorrin and candidates Nancy Barba and Bubba Fish. The disgruntled landlords and hurt-feelings club of the Culver City Democrats United has endorsed the remaining three.
Both of the clubs and all of the candidates talk about community and leadership and, of course, everyone is very excited about Kamala Harris. However, with a little scrutiny, even a casual observer will notice that nearly every collection of lawn signs or organizational endorsement represents one slate or the other.
Why?
The truth is that hiding just under the rhetoric of community and leadership, Culver City is organizing along two distinct ideological lines: one of progress, shared by our endorsed slate, and one of the past, shared by the conservatives.
Culver City, founded as a sundown town and operated by local business interests for generations, has only recently had any semblance of progressive values at the administrative level. Past councils have made headlines for racist remarks about Mexican immigrants, hiring police involved in the beating of Rodney King, and for perpetuating the systemic racial discrimination of exclusionary zoning.
In particular, Albert Vera Sr. was involved in both the hiring of the disgraced police officer and perpetuating exclusionary zoning. Through his actions as a council member, his son Albert Vera, Jr. carries on the racist legacy of his father. As recently as the August 26 City Council meeting, he and the other two conservatives in the majority, Göran Eriksson and Dan O’Brien, voted to protect low-density family zoning on the south side of Culver Boulevard between Elenda and Sepulveda. If not for State law prohibiting it, they would have prevented even that modest update. Every year he writes a blank check for the police department to purchase weapons of war for civilian law enforcement, and he oversaw the reinstatement of the old policy of pretextual stops, despite knowing that it adversely impacts the poor and minorities.
Progressive policy is viewed overwhelmingly positively in Culver City, where the Democratic party has a virtual political monopoly. The trick for this conservative group is to market and identify themselves as progressive, while coordinating to prevent actual progressive policy from being implemented. Hence the alignment of groups like Democrats United, who serve to obfuscate from inside the party, with more aggressive reactionary front groups like Protect Culver City. Protect Culver City was founded and is led by alt-right bigot Ron Bassilian, a Republican who embarrassed himself running against Karen Bass in 2018. His new group derived its name from Protect Culver City Renters, an organization I joined and continue to work with today to protect renters’ rights in Culver City. The intention was to sow confusion and “own the libs.” Both Democrats United and Protect Culver City have endorsed all three conservative candidates.
At the August 14, 2023 Council Meeting, local crank and gun enthusiast Robert Zirgulis gave a clear endorsement of the opposition’s right-wing politics during public comment. “You know we voted for you guys, to end the homeless… [mumbling about “vagrants”]… giving affordable housing, I think if you can’t afford to live in Culver City, you shouldn’t be living here,” he said. It’s true that they voted for the conservatives to remove the poor from the city, and that’s what they did. Perhaps not yet enough for Zirgulis, but enough to align our city policy with that of the Trump-appointed Supreme Court’s decision in the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson et al. Before that decision, it was considered unconstitutionally cruel and unusual to take away the only shelter people had if there was no alternative housing. But on a party-line vote, Trump’s Supreme Court reversed it, opening the path for cities like ours to condemn the poorest residents to even more misery and devastation. If Vera is such a great Democrat, who professes to care so much about the unhoused, why would he vote for policy in alignment with Trump’s stacked Supreme Court?
On September 12, Trump hosted a rally in Tucson, Arizona where he addressed housing. In particular he focused on immigrant “invasions” and protecting exclusionary zoning. “Finally, I will save America’s suburbs by protecting single-family zoning. The radical left wants to abolish the suburbs by forcing apartment complexes and low-income housing into the suburbs right next to your beautiful house. Right next, you have a beautiful house and they want a nice low-income building to be right next to you,” he said. At the March 11 meeting this year, Albert Vera opposed seeking funding of up to $49 million for low-income housing and bike infrastructure. Why does Albert Vera’s housing policy align with Donald Trump’s?
At the same time, during the DNC, former President Obama declared “we need to build more units and clear away outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people.” Kamala Harris has shocked even me in her promise to “end America’s housing shortage.” The damage done to society by the exclusionary zoning policies enacted by our predecessors is now so obvious and uncontroversial that mainline centrist Democrats at the national level are vowing to change it. By comparison, Albert Vera and his conservative colleagues have worked very openly to segregate housing here. State law now requires every city to rezone to permit a certain minimum number of dwelling units. When the conservative majority took over, they got around this by packing the majority of new development into the Fox Hills and Clarkdale areas of Culver City. These are historically the most black and Latino regions of the city. Why are our Club’s candidates in alignment with former President Obama and Vice President Harris, yet the opposition aligns with Trump?
After hospital workers endured years of abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic, on December 12, 2022, the progressive majority Council passed an ordinance establishing a $25 per hour minimum wage for healthcare workers. Albert Vera was the lone vote in opposition. Surprisingly, even Culver City’s own Ebenezer Scrooge, Göran Eriksson, voted in support. As a steadfast adversary to workers, it was a highly suspicious move, and while he may not be an admirable leader, he is a skilled manipulator. Using a parliamentary trick, by voting in favor, he was able to bring back the vote for reconsideration once the new conservative council majority was installed later that same night. This gave him, aided by the billionaire’s boy, Dan O’Brien, and now acting Mayor Vera again, a majority to repeal the ordinance by a 3-2 vote. So one of his very first acts as Mayor was to kick healthcare workers while they were down. By comparison, Mayor Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, Nancy Barba and Bubba Fish are tried and true allies of working people of all backgrounds. They align their values with data and steep themselves in policy to actually understand history, context and the principal causes of the issues facing us today. Homelessness, housing affordability, climate change, transportation, discrimination. These issues are all intertwined and have known and actionable solutions. I credit Planning Commissioner Barba and the deep study she’s made of housing policy with helping me understand the complexities of the housing crisis, changing me from a nuanced left-NIMBY to a full-throated urban evangelist. Fish, a graduate of the Luskin School of Public Policy now working for the County as a Transportation Deputy has deep expertise in housing and transportation policy. He brings an incredible energy and passion for a better future that creates opportunities to get us out of our cars and into the community, and for residents to live in safer neighborhoods, protected from the unacknowledged body count and environmental destruction of a vehicular-based transportation system. Mayor McMorrin has shown incredible determination and bravery, standing up for the people she represents and suffering indignities not only from local wingnuts but even from the City Manager, who simply can’t seem to abide tough questions such as “Can we get a report on Project Homekey?” He may take his cues from Vera, who didn’t even bother to show up for our candidate forum.
What these three candidates offer is a vision for the future we can aspire to, hope for, and work towards. What the opposition craves is a return to the past; a Culver City that is an exclusive enclave in retreat from society, hiding and afraid of the world, a place where nothing changes and only the wealthy are welcome. It’s been a rough start to the decade. Personally, I think we all could stand to be more optimistic, and relish the chance to engage with the world.
Lastly, while the left looks forward and the right looks back, we should ask how far back do they really want to go? Culver City’s Historical Context Study was designed to offer a better understanding of the racial and cultural discrimination caused by policy choices made over the last several generations. Club President Jeff Schwartz wrote about it in detail this April. While the study ends on a light note intended to palliate the distaste of confronting our past, the final report, overseen by Vera, redacted the names of the individuals who were responsible for the problems we face today. Understandable with his own legacy at stake. But how can we improve the future if we can’t hold those responsible for the past accountable? How far back does the Culver City right want to go? In 100 years, when we’re all gone, maybe what remains of Culver City will do another historical context study. If they do, I hope they remember to use the right names.