Councilman Grabinski first represented the 7th Council district from 1986-1994 (a newcomer defeating then-incumbent Eunice Sato). In 1994, Grabinski ran for Mayor, made it into the runoff but lost to then-political newcomer/former LBCC Pres-Sup't Beverly O'Neill.

Hoping to return to Council office two years later, Grabinski rented an apartment in the 8th district, ran against 8th dist. incumbent Jeff Kellogg and lost.

In 1998, he sought a final 7th district term (outpolling one-term Councilman Mike Donelon) and held office from 1998-2002...then ran for Mayor a second time and didn't make the runoff (with O'Neill running a write-in campaign.) In April 2002, O'Neill finished first, Vice Mayor/Councilman Dan Baker finished second, Norm Ryan finished third...and Grabinski finished fourth (and ultimately endorsed O'Neill.) ..

One of Councilman Grabinski's final actions on his last Council day was joining in a unanimous, and now infamous, Council vote to support a costly 2002 pension spike for City Hall's largest public employee union.

Ray Grabinski endured multiple personal tragedies, including the loss of his first wife to brain cancer and the death of one of their sons.

His 2002 Mayoral campaign website (visible online as Nov. 19. 2014) described his life as follows:

...Ray Grabinski comes from a classic American working-class family. In 1943 [his Mayoral campaign website contains the typo "1973"] when Ray was born, his mom worked as a Rosie the Riveter in Chicago, and his dad returned from World War II to work in as an electrician in a steel mill.

His parents' subsequent divorce and mother's remarriage took the 9-year-old Ray to California. The move took him away from his outspoken Italian grandmother. He recalls those days of pasta and argument with delight, for it was in her kitchen that he learned first-hand the value of respect and consideration paid to children.

The family settled in humble neighborhoods in Compton and in North Long Beach. Ray attended Hamilton Junior High and Jordan High School. Upon high school graduation, Ray landed a job at Domenico's in Belmont Shore.

It was at this restaurant that he met his wife, Mary Brady, a lovely Irish beauty who dated older men. "Ones with nice cars," Ray points out. Still, the local teenager caught her eye, and a 26-year-long romance ensued, which took them from Long Beach to military service in Germany and back again. Their first son, Ray Jr., was born in 1967, with William, Michael, and Matthew following him over the next eight years. During much of this time, Ray helped support this family by working at Southern Star and Milling and then at Santa Fe Importers. In 1973, he bought The Pizza Factory; in 1981, started the Signal Hill Deli; and in 1984 bought the Bixby Knolls Deli.

It was during this last period, when Ray lived on the 3400 block of Orange Avenue, that Mary took ill, first with an aneurysm and then, a decade later, with brain cancer. Neighbors still recall Ray pushing Mary around in her wheelchair, and how, despite his grief at her illness, Ray became active in neighborhood politics, fighting a chemical plan that wanted to locate in California Heights. With his neighbors, Ray founded the California Heights Action Committee, which is today the California Heights Association.

The founding of the association was only the first step in what would become decades of involvement in Long Beach's neighborhoods and local government, first as a representative of Cal Heights in the audience of City Council meetings, then behind the long bank of desks behind which Long Beach's city councillors consider the future of the city.

There is a picture of Ray, on the night he won his first election to the city council in the mid 1980s, where he's leaning down, with his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and looking Mary straight in the eye. Her other eye is seriously bandaged. Ray has a look of what can only be described as pure communication and this is what is absolutely right about Ray. He connects.

Ray was on still on the city council when Mary passed away in 1988. Ray served two terms on the council. Ensuing years saw him serve in key posts on several pivotal regional committees, as well as once again serve Cal Heights on the City Council...

Long Beach resident John Deats, a former member of LB's former Public Safety Advisory Comm'n who would later lose his wife Janet to cancer, told LBREPORT.com that Ray Grabinski's actions -- in the way he cared for his wife Mary during her devastating illness "set the gold standard for the way someone should treat their spouse during such an illness."

Ray Grabinski was a scrappy, street-wise campaigner During one candidate forum, the host invited Grabinski and an opponent to ask each other questions. Grabinski's opponent posed a question...to which Grabinski delivered an effective response. The host then asked Grabinski if he had anything he'd like to ask his opponent. Grabinski politely replied with a smile, "No."

Grabinski was a crowd-pleasing public speaker, dazzling audiences by stating populist positions, drawing applause while stopping short of advancing those positions in voted actions. On some occasions, he absented himself or disappeared before a controversial Council vote was called.

One of then-Councilman Grabinski's more noteworthy -- and arguably prescient -- votes came in 2001 [approaching the 2002 election cycle when he'd make a final run for Mayor] when he bucked downtown LB's establishment [and then-Mayor O'Neill who'd seek a third term in 2002] by casting the sole "no" vote against giving the developer of the "Queensway Bay retail and entertainment project" (now dubbed the "Pike at Rainbow Harbor") a 15 month extension. At the Feb. 13, 2001 Council meeting [reported in detail by LBREPORT.com barely six months after we launched (archival coverage here), Councilman Grabinski stated:

I suppose I'm going to continue to be the lump in the otherwise smoothe carpet. I supported this project with and without DDR...but there have been things that have happened over the last couple of years that have changed dramatically and if this City Council doesn't face them, then essentially what we're going to do is make the worst kind of a decision. We're going to take what was a dream five or six years ago and turn it into the nightmare of the future for everyone else.

I think that the real tragedy here is, is that we feel as if this is the only thing we can do. I think the people on this City Council have gone out of their way to work with Dean Oliver, gone out of their way to work with DDR, and I think DDR wants to make this project work, but that was not what was originally promised to the people in this community. What was promised was something that would knock people's socks off, not a shopping center...

...The logic, the sequence in all of this, is kind of like watching a train wreck happenin' real slow. A lot of people know that these facts are true, and you can make them work for you. I can say that, you know, look at the downtown in Long Beach, look at the shoreline in Long Beach and talk about the great things that are down there. That is not going to, in and of itself, draw people to something that, as the gentleman from Senator Burton's office pointed out, has been done before.

And the difficulty is it's been done before you get to downtown Long Beach. In the last five years, the market that was there when they first started planning all of this has been chopped up by a successful Marina Pacifica, a successful 605 freeway, and some other things that have happened...I went to the theaters in Lakewood once about a year ago, right after the 605 center opened, and they were just about dried up and blown away. And I guarantee you, if they open any kind of heater in this project, the AMC Theaters that we were going to support and make real wonderful on Pine Avenue will have the same thing happen

And some people will say let the market play itself out. You can say that when you're not using public dollars. You can't say it when you're financing a lot of these projects with public funds, because we're the ones who get stuck in the market. We're the ones who will be here as long as that project is. I want to remind everybody that we're just knocking down the 20 year old shopping center...

And I guess what I just want to say for the public and my colleagues, this is something that we will be making a decision for, for other people coming behind us. And it might have been a prudent decision four or five years ago to move forward with some of this, but right now, you don't have the 25 to 30 people lined up who were here before...

We didn't listen in El Dorado Park, it cost us $200,000 and four or five years. The Harbor didn't listen at the Naval Station. The Harbor Commission paid $4 million to the Historic Society to get out of its situation that they didn't pay attention to the public on. And I'm not gonna go through all of 'em, but when you find yourself kind of bumping up against the people you are supposed to represent, it ought to at least give us pause, and I know there's gonna be some changes and some recommendations.

But I just want to throw caution to the wind and say this is the kind of an issue that people get elected for. Not the proclaiming something, not going out and cutting a ribbon someplace, this is the kind of decision once or twice a year that they really pay us for, the big bucks, you know, the $29,000 a year whatever it is, and I want everybody to think about the decision that we're makin'.

Because if in 12 months they come back and they say, you know, the finances just aren't there, the economy is kind of floppin' a little bit, I have to tell you that we will be saying the same thing we've said for the past six years "We've got to go along."...I can't support it, mainly because it's not what was intended originally and because the financial things that have changed have put DDR and the City in an uphill, I mean this isn't even a level playing field anymore because the economy is not what it was five and a half years ago. I hope that I'm the one that's wrong. I hope that I'm the one that's wrong.

A few months later, Grabinski cast the sole "no" vote (September 13, 2001) on a tidelands trust land exchange ("land swap") meant to facilitate the Queensway Bay development. On that vote, Grabinski sought a delay (his motion failed for lack of a second) and then voted "no" on grounds the vote shouldn't be taken two days after the Sept.11 terror attacks.

Details of former Councilman Grabinski's passing weren't immediately available. Further as we learn it.