Constituent Communication

A little over a year ago I signed up for a Facebook account after receiving an invitation from now 1st District Councilman Robert Garcia. At the time Robert was one of the publisher's of the Long Beach Post and I was a contributor to the site; I wrote about the Facebook invitation and the technological gap between my generation (47) and Robert's (31) in a post titled "Tech Savy, Culturally Naive." Since that post in June 2008 we have seen a Presidential candidate leverage the available technology to promote his campaign to deliver messages and collect cash, and we have seen Garcia photocopy Barack Obama's campaign playbook and win a crowded contest for his seat on the Long Beach City Council. Using the exponential math of degrees of separation social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, and to some degree the more business oriented site LinkedIn, connect friends of friends of friends to new friends.

As an experiment and an excuse to gather friends together, in March I used my Facebook page to create and launch a barbecue at our home. "Stuftivus" was a great time with fourteen people who did not know each other but knew me or Leslie or both--but had communicated through comments made on my Facebook page. As the party got started and people showed up it was if they were walking into a high school reunion, I vaguely remember you, let's catch up. And it was a great time, friends of my mine became friends with friends of a friend. Degrees of separation were lifted. Now many of these people now communicate directly and their circles have gotten a bit bigger and the world a bit smaller.

Last week the Facebook home pages of thousands of people across the country and across the globe had several postings from friends, or friends of friends, announcing Councilman Garcia's placing on the Long Beach City Council's agenda an Equal Benefits Ordinance. The Equal Benefits Ordinance, or EBO, would require contractors bidding on city contracts who offer benefits to their employees and their spouses to also offer those same benefits to employees who are in domestic partnerships (more information available on Garcia's website). While I am opposed to our cash strapped and broke city adding any more costs to doing business in a city that is already notoriously unfriendly to businesses, I am not using this space to debate the merits of the proposal and the merits of opposition. My positions on gay rights are on public display so any who take my position on the issue as anti-gay is ignorant of my stance, my position is from that of a business owner, a citizen of a city that has been mismanaged for years and the over-extension of government.

That all said, the issue I want to address is how Garcia is changing government in our city with his presentation of this issue to the public, using his Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts, and those of his staffers, to announce the EBO at tomorrow's city council meeting. With a drip of announcements on all their pages, and encouraging their friends and contacts to show up at the city council meeting, to write letters to the offices of other council members and the mayor, the message and the news spreads quickly through the on-line communities.

Garcia's use of the social media to distribute his policies and news from his office is very cost effective and efficient. Facebook and other similar sites have no charge to users, revenue is generated from advertising. With a few moments of staff time and a few clicks Garcia's staff is able to saturate multiple websites and communicate with several thousand people--directing all of them to Garcia's website, not paid for or controlled by the city. Using the technology that his generation is dependent upon to communicate with friends, get news, express themselves and their opinions, allows Garcia to target his supporters and their circles of friends and acquaintances. By by-passing the traditional media, or putting it in second or third position for getting news, Garcia is going directly to voters and supporters without the filters of reporters and editors.

Garcia is the youngest person on the Long Beach City Council and he is showing his elder peers on the council how to communicate with their younger constituents. Constituents who do not have home telephones, do not typically subscribe to the local daily papers and who spend more time surfing their social media sites to see what their friends and acquaintances are posting and reading than seeking out news stories on their own. Garcia's messages and notices are an active part of the social media exchanges within the Long Beach area, and the results were seen first in his election in April and will most likely be seen tomorrow night at the city council meeting where the seats will be filled because of his agenda item for an Equal Benefits Ordinance.

Since my self-deprecating post last June I have become much more in tune with using Facebook and Twitter (my Twitter here), though I have struggled with separation of my personal and business uses--Twitter is almost solely business postings of rates and economic news through the day, while Facebook is much more of a personal and social site for me. Using the social media I have seen how effective it can be in engaging others in discussion or for supporting an event or cause. The communication to multitudes through a quick sentence and posting a link is very effective and at times empowering.

Garcia is considered on the cutting edge with many in the "old guard" of politics and government, but rather than cutting edge he is very much mainstream for his generation and the way they interact and communicate with each other. Using their available technology, provided for free, they are able to share themselves, their ideas and their causes quickly and pervasively through friends of friends of friends of friends of.....

If you, like many of my acquaintances, have been pooh-poohing Facebook and Twitter as for younger generations and not a serious means of communication, I suggest you look at the occupant of the White House and the 1st District Council seat in Long Beach as evidence of the effectiveness of properly harnessing the sites and the power they bring to your message.

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Political Calculus

There are those who follow politics the way others follow baseball and box scores, there are hits, runs and errors. These days in the City of Long Beach, and the State of California, one needs not a box score but a calendar. For any politician, or anyone thinking of becoming a politician in Long Beach, a calendar is the most important tool in the box; well besides financing from unions.

Term limits are the root cause of our state's political and budgetary problems. While term limits in the city create problems locally, even our city budget issues can be traced directly to the term limits for elected officials in Sacramento. Enacted in 1990 by voters, primarily to get then Speaker Willie Brown out of office, members of the State Assembly are limited to three terms of two years each and members of the State Senate are limited to two terms of four years each.

Further compounding the problems caused by term limits on the state level has been the drawing of legislative districts that create "safe seats." In the last election voters passed one of the few worthwhile propositions we have seen in the past two decades, Proposition 11 took the ability to redraw legislative districts out of the hands of the legislature and gave the power to a panel appointed by a commission of auditors. If the Prop 11 re-districting commission works as voters hope then after the 2010 census our state's legislative districts will be redrawn to more accurately reflect population and geographic boundaries than political party boundaries. However, big however, the changes will not be in effect until the 2012 state elections at the earliest.

Virtually every seat in the California Assembly and California Senate is a "safe seat". Our Bixby Knolls abode sits in the 55th Assembly District and the 27 Senate District, it does not really matter who the elected representatives are because they have been and will be Democrats due to the districts each being over 65% registered Democrat. So while we have term limits for those currently in office, what we have is a revolving door of the same person in a different body always in the Assembly and the Legislature.

Everyone knows when a seat will become available, and everyone knows who will get elected. In all but 3 of the Assembly and Senate seats whoever has a (D) next to their name on the ballot in November will win the election. In the other seats the winner of the Republican primary will win the election. So if you live in the Bixby Knolls area your Assembly representative, Wayne Furutani who was elected in a special election in 2008 will be leaving office in 2016 (finish his special election term then finish his two terms under term limits).

Of greater interest locally is when will Bonnie Lowenthal be termed out of office following her election to the State Assembly in 2008? Following her re-election in 2010 (and with the safe districts how can she not?) Lowenthal is termed out of her seat. And already individuals are lining up to take a run at her seat which overlaps parts of the both the Long Beach 1st City Council District and the Long Beach 7th City Council District. If my map reading and knowledge of home addresses is correct, this confluence of term limits and current district boundaries presents a 2014 showdown between two very bright up and comers in the Democratic Party.

Earlier this month Robert Garcia ran a perfect campaign on the Obama blueprint and won a special election for the Long Beach 1st Council District (filling the seat vacated by Bonnie Lowenthal). Garcia was attacked by the local Democratic Party because he is a "newcomer" to the party, but make no mistake Garcia's politics are very aligned with the Democratic majority in the region. Everything about Garcia makes him star material for the Democrats, born in South America, immigrating with his parents as a young child, received amnesty under President Reagan, left the Republican Party, Hispanic, homosexual, working on a PhD, incredibly bright and articulate and handsome to boot; Garcia is a great political package and he has a political future beyond the Long Beach city council. Garcia will be finishing his first term, presuming he wins his re-election in 2010, which he will by landslide, when Lowenthal is termed out of office in 2014.

Further uptown Long Beach City Council 7th District Representative Tonia Reyes Uranga is being termed out of office in 2010 and her husband Roberto Uranga was a stated and obvious candidate to keep this seat under family control. Uh, not so fast. You see the 1st District is not the only geographic area of the state with young, intelligent and political savvy individuals. A few days after Garcia won the election for the 1st District, James Johnson announced his candidacy for the 7th Council Seat in 2010.

Johnson gets a complete breakdown of his experience in the City of Long Beach on the Long Beach Report, while I am generally not a huge fan of the site's primary contributor his history on Johnson taken in context is pretty thorough. Johnson is very intelligent and also a rising star in the Democratic Party. He apparently is also good at math as if he wins the 7th District Council seat he will be ending his first term when....Bonnie Lowenthal is termed out of office.

Now there is a chance that the 54th Assembly District Boundaries could be redrawn before the 2014 election, but with the natural border of the 710 Freeway on the western edge of part of the district any redrawing will probably include the home bases of both Garcia and Johnson. Looking beyond the Assmebly both are in the same California State Senate District as well as the same Congressional District.

Because of term limits both these intelligent young men know what is avaiable politically in 2014, know their best chance of winning the prize of the Assembly is to have experience on the City Council to help boost their fund raising and friend making, and know that even with re-districting their district will not change much demographically--it will still be solidly Democrat. Further, both being bright they know that incumbents within the party are extremely difficult to beat so they must win in 2014 to continue their political futures.

So sports fans, grab some popcorn and a lawn chair. The race for the 7th District Council Seat in Long Beach is a race for much more than just that seat. Due to political calculus and term limits it is also a race to set up opponents in 2014 between two of our city's brightest young men with equally bright political futures...potentially.

Long Beach 1st City Council District Endorsement

Some time ago I spoke with Robert Garcia and asked him if he was going to run for the 1st District Council seat in Long Beach; at the time Bonnie Lowenthal still held the seat and had made no announcement concerning her pursuing the seat she now holds in the California Assembly. Garcia, in his affable manner, gave a chuckle and said something to the effect of, "We'll see what the future holds." I knew then he would pursue the position when it became available. Not long after that Garcia contacted several friends and colleagues and indicated he would be running for the seat, either if Lowenthal (Bonnie) was elected to higher office and vacated the seat, or when she would be termed out. At that time I told Garcia I supported him.

My relationship with Garcia goes back several years to when he participated in the Leadership Long Beach program, at the time working as the assistant to my friend Gina Rushing, President of St. Anthony High School in Long Beach. As I came to know him better through the years my first impressions of Garcia were hardened, he is very bright, he is extremely friendly, he cares about Long Beach, he is a great guy and a good man. All of these are great character traits, ones we want in our friends and ideally our leaders; but when it comes to electing our policy makers good character, while important, should not be our sole determining factor.

Last week I saw news that the union that represents approximately 4,000 of the employees of the City of Long Beach (International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers --IMA) was interviewing the candidates for the Long Beach 1st District Council seat for the purposes of making an endorsement. As part of the process the IMA was requiring candidates to sign a "pledge" (posted here on candidate Rick Berry's site) which among other items has the signer to pledge to support the non-democratic process of "card check" to establish unions, and to encourage and support unionization of businesses in the city. By signing the pledge an individual is aligning him- or herself with the union's ideology and practices, essentially forming an alliance with the union. Once signed it seems the union would have a right to use the pledge as an instrument at a later date to influence, or encourage, an elected individual to stand by their word and signature--whether they endorsed that individual or not. Robert Garcia signed this pledge, and therefore agreed to align with the IMA and those principles laid out in its pledge.

Because of his signing of this pledge, along with his solicitation of the IMA endorsement to accompany the endorsements he had previously received from both the Fire and Police Associations in Long Beach, I cannot support Garcia's candidacy for the 1st District seat.

The City Council is the employer for the City of Long Beach, while the office of the City Manager negotiates the contracts with the various unions and individuals, ultimately it is the City Council that approves contracts and budgets that are impacted by those agreements. As such members of council, and members of the city negotiating team(s), must have an adversarial relationship with those whom they employ to ensure they are doing their job: negotiate the best possible position for the City of Long Beach and its residents. Members of council are not there to represent and work for the employees of the city, they are not to negotiate and approve contracts that in the best interests of the employees, they are there to represent the voters and citizens of Long Beach and negotiate and approve contracts that are in the best interest of those citizens.

By accepting union funds for campaigns and pandering to them for political endorsements (which come with volunteers and free campaign mailers, phone banks and other campaign efforts) candidates are aligning with the employees and tacitly telling the citizens when it comes time to vote their interests lie with the employees not the citizens. The majority of our current council, and previous councils, have had these same endorsements, and voted for budget after budget increasing salaries and benefits that have strapped our city financially. It is time to break the cycle and not elect the candidate with the city employee union’s support.

The political history of our city shows a stepping stone of city council members creating labor-friendly legislation and votes subsequently getting support and contributions from statewide labor organizations to win their seats in Sacramento. From Lowenthals (Alan and Bonnie), to Oropeza to Richardson those who have the backing of the labor unions win elections--just ask Jenny Oropeza who lost her bid for Congress because of one vote in Sacramento that was against the unions’ wishes; they then supported Richardson with significant donations and she won the seat.

Political calculus and term limits suggest that Garcia is set up perfectly to run for Lowenthal's (Bonnie) seat in the Assembly in eight years when both are termed out, if elected, and can do so with the support of the labor unions--if he plays his cards right. With a very bright political future can Garcia not afford to keep his eye on future donations from the single biggest predictor of election victory in Long Beach, labor union support?

Long Beach, like the State of California, is facing serious financial deficits – deficits which will require cuts in programs, funding of projects and employment costs. Long Beach cannot afford more members of council who are beholden to their employees for their offices--we must have independent members of council if we are to solve our financial problems.

Because he did not sign the pledge, and also because of his views on the purpose of City government, the ideas he has to improve our fiscal standing and his relative independence from interest groups in the city, I endorse Rick Berry for Long Beach 1st Council District.
I encourage those in the 1st Council District to show the rest of the city that "change" really is what will happen in this election--vote for the candidate who is not like your previous member of council, is not beholden to the same special interests that directly benefit from the budget he will be voting on, is willing to challenge the status quo at City Hall. Vote for Rick Berry for 1st District City Council.

There are those cynics who will feel my endorsement of Berry and not Garcia is somehow connected to my leaving the Long Beach Post. Let me assure you the two are unrelated, I have had no conversations or communication with Garcia about the Long Beach Post since perhaps late November. This decision was made after, and independently of my decision to leave the Long Beach Post.