So what happens when you wage an election campaign and fail to hold an incumbent accountable for his voting record? You lose...which is exactly what Damon Dunn did, much as the monied candidates Bonnie Lowenthal and Doug Otto did two months earlier.

To have held Garcia to his record would have meant holding him to Mayor Foster's record. Garcia didn't shrink from his record; he affirmatively cited it (but spun and whitewashed it.) Dunn shrank from holding Garcia accountable for that record, what it really did to Long Beach taxpayers and to this city.

• Foster and Garcia didn't produce a "surplus"; Sacramento handed City Hall a windfall (by dissolving Redevelopment, which Foster tried to prevent); management has said the temporary "surplus" won't exist in upcoming budget (safely after the election.)

• Foster and Garcia left Long Beach taxpayers with 200 fewer police, a skeleton anti-gang unit, soaring residential burglaries, fire stations without fire engines and -- most important -- no plan to restore what LB taxpayers we once had. Dunn let them get away with calling this "fiscal discipline" despite the fact other cities weathered "the great recession" without decimating core services for taxpayers.

• Foster/Garcia's self-proclaimed "fiscal discipline" handed generous unbudgeted raises to management and found well over a million (to start) for a profligate Civic Center rebuild without even seeking bids for a more economical seismic retrofit. (Dunn equivocated on the Civic Center rebuild; Otto said "something is rotten in Denmark," Lowenthal cited a lack of "public participation.")

Dunn (and we presume Lowenthal and Otto) apparently believed what some polls said: that people think LB is "on the right track" and want to "move the city forward." We're not privy to all poll details (including precise questions asked), but we do know that if a candidate doesn't say or do anything to show that they disagree with fluffy facts spun by incumbents, the challengers will end up with prevailing public attitudes that will help elect incumbents.

Did any candidates rhetorically ask taxpayers: are you better off now than you were eight years ago? Did they challenge Garcia's "move forward" verbiage by noting that one can't move a city forward by moving it backward on core services for taxpayers, as he did?

Dunn, Lowenthal and Otto spent big but didn't say this. They let Foster get away basically untouched by them when he recommended a budget that Garcia approved (without holding hearings on the budget in his "Public Safety Committee") that perpetuated shrunken police and fire levels for taxpayers (Aug-Sept. 2013). They remained silent again when Foster gave a boastful "State of the City" message (Jan. 2014) that tried to justify what he'd recommended and a Council majority did.

In our view, that Silence of the Campaign Lambs was a strategic and costly blunder. News outlets echoed Foster's claims as if they were facts. The candidates squandered opportunities to rebut and counter what Foster was saying. Their silence told prospective voters that what Foster said was unanswerable fact. Of course Garcia cut and lifted Foster's unanswered assertions and pasted them nearly whole-cloth into his campaign stump speech and his mailers. Again: Garcia didn't shrink from that record; Dunn and the other monied challengers did.

In addition to these stragegic blunders, Dunn's campaign also made tactical blunders. As but one example, people in multiple parts of town were angered when the "you don't see my name on in" Foster-supported independent expenditure committee stuck campaign signs on lightpoles on private business properties. Dunn [and Lowenthal and Otto and Schipske] should have publicly offered to remove those signs from any business that hadn't agreed to them AND THEN hold a media photo-op to show them taking down those pro-Garcia signs as a business friendly public service.

Dunn's campaign also stupidly had NO Facebook presence with which to interact and spread its message. This created the self-damaging message that Dunn's campaign had no supporters, which wasn't true, while Garcia's campaign had the world, which also wasn't true. And of course the Garcia had Facebook graphics ready for supporters to cut and paste onto their Facebook pages and spread to countless digital friends. Digitally, Dunn's campaign was in the wrong century.

One can't make that many strategic and tactical mistakes and expect to win an election.

Mayoral candidate/Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske, seriously outspent, didn't flinch at Foster but she had to fight on two fronts: one against Garcia/Foster in the Council Chamber and the other against Dunn, Lowenthal and Otto who, to their own detriment, let Garcia and Foster evade accountability for what they were doing. Even with that, she ended up finishing with more votes per dollar spent than any of the other candidates.

Of course Foster detested Schipske. She derailed Foster's 2008 proposed parcel property tax increase, refusing to label it an "emergency," preventing Foster from ramming it through a rubberstamp Council without the normal taxpayer-protective 2/3 majority required.

In 2011, Schipske joined with Councilmembers Gabelich (exited in July 2012) and Neal (will exit in July 2014) to offer an alternative budget that would have tapped a portion of annual oil revenue to avert damaging budget reductions to core taxpayer services. Foster said (accurately) that oil prices are volatile, but we found that argument unpersuasive because if oil prices fell, the Council would have had to reduce spending elsewhere, which it should do to prioritize core services properly. In this (again), Garcia sided with Foster, not taxpayers, and didn't shrink from that record.

In April 2013, Schipske agendized an item to discuss in committee making Councilmembers' emails public if they dealt with the public's business. This was a measure long advocated by the First Amendment Coalition (statewide open government group.) Not one Council incumbent -- including Garcia -- would second her motion to discuss the matter, effectively letting the open government measure die. Dunn, Lowenthal and (especially lawyer) Otto should have velcro'd Garcia to his appalling action. They didn't. (Only in Long Beach would some press outlets fail to editorially support a pro-openness agenda item like this one, THEN editorially sneer that Schipske couldn't get a second to her motion and THEN fail to hold accountable those who blocked greater transparency, who included Garcia.)

In just weeks, Schipske may be the only Councilmember (again) who'll vote against the profligate Civic Center rebuild.

We hope Councilwoman Schipske wears every one of these actions as taxpayer badges of honor.

After July 15, the only check and balance to restore taxpayer services and stop the Civic Center rebuild will be a new Council majority diluted by parts of an old Council majority.

What's past is prologue. We'll report what happens -- without flinching -- on LBREPORT.com.

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