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Daryl Defeated Goliath...And Goliath Helped Defeat Goliath


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(April 16, 2015) -- Daryl Supernaw beat Goliath...and Goliath helped defeat Goliath. Mr. Supernaw won a Council seat against an opponent whose campaign messages were (1) she was endorsed by Mayor Robert Garcia and seven of eight incumbent Councilmembers and the former 4th dist. Councilmember and (2) she was endorsed by LB's police and firefighter unions.

Her campaign significantly outspent Mr. Supernaw. She had the support L.A. County Federation of Labor's PAC at last report spent over $40,000 on unspecified "field work" (a sum greater than some Council campaigns spend in total.) Her campaign may have spent the largest sum per vote in any winner-take-all special election in the history of Long Beach; we're checking on this.

And the net effect was that Mr. Supernaw's opponent lost by a double-digit margin.

[Scroll down for further]

Of course the incumbent Mayor, his like minded Council incumbents, the police and firefighter unions and the usual suspects are scrambling to avoid the obvious message: voters saw what's been going on at City Hall...and they don't like it. Within a space of less than a year, LB's current Council has:

  • Left LB taxpayers with roughly 200 fewer police officers deployable citywide than the City provided five years ago, including the complete elimination of LBPD's former field anti-gang unit. No representative of the LB Police Officers Association publicly testified against this vote. [We know that a number of rank and file officers are not pleased by the Council action.]

  • Left three eastside fire stations without fire engines capable of putting out fires (leaving a Los Altos residence to burn across the street from one fire station until a more distant engine arrived.) No representative of the LB Firefighters Association publicly testified against this vote. [We know that a number of rank and file firefighters are not pleased by the Council action.]

  • Voted unanimously to spend millions to impose a Civic Center rebuild [that Terry Jensen has argued will cost taxpayers millions more than city management initially claimed] without seriously pursuing a City Hall seismic retrofit. The deal shovels more citywide resources downtown while evading a citywide public vote. Multiple members of the public testified against this.

  • Voted unanimously to approve a citywide "project labor agreement" at the behest of politically active trade unions, hiding behind aa city management staff report that pretended it couldn't find evidence of bid increases under PLAs (when there are multiple reports, both pro and con, on the internet.) Adding insult to injury, management didn't show, and the Council didn't insist that taxpayers be shown, what the proposed agreement actually said [beyond a summarizing memo] before they voted to approve it. [As of dawn April 16, City Hall continues to stonewall release of the PLA text that the Council voted to approve.]

  • Voted unanimously to spend a million dollars, initially concealed from the public and the press by Mayor Garcia's office, uncovered by LBREPORT.com, to get $3 million Bloomberg philanthropies grant dollars for unspecified innovations to promote unspecified "economic development" with no visible Council or public oversight over how the $4 million total will be spent and $1 million taxpayer dollar investment will be recouped (if at all.)

  • Voted to triple the size of Mayor and Councilmember officeholder "slush funds" (portrayed as public-serving but effectively politically self-serving.) (Councilmembers Mungo and Price dissented, supported doubling the sums.)

Wow. What a resume recommending a new hire.

And that comes after the former Mayor (who endorsed the current Mayor) recommended, and an immediate past Council majority voted, to approve unbudgeted city management raises now draining over a million General Fund dollars annually.

Of course the current Council is now trying to blame a looming deficit (spending exceeding expected revenue) on PERS. or oil, or anything else, hoping to divert public attention away from the Council's own choices. 4th district voters didn't want to hire the person recommended by those who made and applauded those choices. Mr. Supernaw, whose record of neighborhood accomplishments no one denied, didn't have to wage a negative campaign. The very things that his opponent emphasized in her campaign helped sink her.

Deploying union-paid mercenaries onto 4th district doorsteps amplified the damage. From the reactions we've heard from 4th district residents, and seen on Facebook, we think they cost Ms. Chico votes in the eastern part of the district.

Voters also ignored the endorsements of LB's police and firefighter unions. The police union's endorsement a year earlier of Garcia's Mayoral run -- after he'd joined in Council votes that erased the largest number of police officers for taxpayers within a five year period in the city's history -- had already made a mockery of that union's endorsement in a race where it could have respectfully remained neutral.

The firefighters union didn't back Garcia for Mayor but joined in backing his and his allies' endorsee in the 4th district Council race. It chose to spurn Mr. Supernaw's long time support for LB firefighters, stemming in part from his father's 20+ year career as a Long Beach firefighter. The firefighters union earned the public's respect by passionately urging the Council to maintain LB's previous paramedic response system on the merits. In our opinion, it blundered badly with an endorsement in this race that voters didn't trust.

Of course a union's top priority is to fight for its members' wages and benefits. However public safety unions -- whose members risk physical injury and death daily -- squander their political power when they give away their endorsements away based on perceived expediency. In our view, it would behoove the leadership of LB's police and firefighter unions to set higher political standards for themselves. If they can't genuinely endorse on a candidate's record on the merits, they ought to remain neutral...and if they do endorse, they should release the recordings of their endorsees' candidate interview to show their decision is merited.

Yes, the election only measured Fourth district voters, but that district (especially its eastside) is a political bellwether It's a high propensity voter area similar to high propensity voter areas in much of the 5th district [whose incumbent wisely stayed out of the 4th district race] and middle-class parts of the 3rd, 7th and 8th districts. Those areas collectively elect officeholders citywide.

Council incumbents are free to shrug at their political peril the message just sent by 4th district voters. Smart Council incumbents will take the opportunity to adjust and re-center themselves. The standard cliche is that Daryl Supernaw will have to work with other Councilmembers, which is true...but it's also true that other Council incumbents have good reasons to work with him. LB's next elections -- for four Council districts -- come in April 2016.


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