Conservatives Win Venice Election


By Jim Smith

A slate that includes several Republicans, owners of multiple properties and advocates of decertification of the neighborhood council last year, won a decisive victory in the Sept. 10-11 voting for the Board of the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council.


They achieved their victory after waging an expensive campaign in which they claimed to be the “real” progressives. The Venice Progressives slate – which this newspaper endorsed – won only six of 16 contests, compared to the upstart “conservative progressives” who won all seven executive committee offices, five of seven at-large positions and three of the seven district positions.

The slate was apparently organized by Marta Evry and friends who claimed it wasn’t a slate at all. Among the dirty tricks were the publicizing of a website, <www. veniceprogressives.org> that was nearly identical to the long standing Venice Progressives website <www.venice-progressives.org>.

It is unknown who backed the slate, aside from Marta Evry and what was the role of developers in funding their expensive campaign, including paying for mailings. (Alice Stek, Treasurer of Venice Progressives, reports that her slate spent around $1,200 on the election. While DeDe Audet told the Beachhead that she thinks both groups spent about $4,000 each.)

Venice Progressives had initially cried foul when the election was switched from June to September in defiance of the GRVNC bylaws.

Quite a few of the just elected board members signed onto the ad-hoc election committee which, with the encouragement of the city’s Dept. of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), wrote the rules under which the vote was conducted. The rules included strict requirements for identification, very limited absentee voting, and a ban on campaigning within 500 feet of the polling place (five times that of state and federal elections), and a polling place that is generally considered to be in Mar Vista, not Venice.

According to David Buchanan, owner of Marina Media and an associate of some of the candidates who variously called themselves “independents,” “real progressives” and the “Venice Progress Coalition,” the slate includes the following:

• 2 progressives by reputation and action – Linda Lucks and Kelly Willis (many Venice Progressives would dispute that Willis is any kind of progressive);
• 2 Moderate Republicans – DeDe Audet and Richard Myers;
• 2 Conservative Republicans – CJ Cole and Yolanda Gonzalez;
• 9 of varying political philosophies or unknown.

Since Audet, Myers, Cole and Gonzalez are all on the executive committee, this means that four out of the seven executive officers are Republicans, if Buchanan is correct.

Don’t pack your bags for Berkeley yet. It’s doubtful that Venice has really turned conservative.

Only two days after the Neighborhood Council election, there was a State Assembly election in which much of Venice gave more votes to the Peace and Freedom candidate than they gave to all of the four Republicans who were running, combined.

Instead, several factors combined to defeat the Venice Progressives:

1) a well-funded campaign was run by the opposition;

2) dirty tricks were used, including confusing voters as to who were the real progressives;
3) several years of continuous attacks on the progressives had a cumulative effect;

4) a number of the conservatives played key roles on the ad hoc election committee and wrote rules that were conducive to their getting elected;

5) presidential candidate DeDe Audet was listed on the GRVNC website as the election committee chairperson up until the last week of the campaign;

6) most Progressives who had been on the previous GRVNC board chose not to run again, and for various reasons, did little to help their slate get elected.

Shortly after the election, the Venice Progressives candidates met and decided not to file challenges to the election. According to Sabrina Venskus, there were plenty of reasons to challenge the election, but most candidates felt that they would be swiftly rejected by the city’s Dept. of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), headed by Greg Nelson. Several of the Progressives have been calling on Mayor Antonio Vlilaraigosa to replace Nelson with a more neutral department head.

In addition, with new elections due next June according to the GRVNC bylaws, Progressives felt their time could be better spent organizing a stronger progressive majority and involving themselves in the work of the Neighborhood Council.

Posted: Sat - October 1, 2005 at 02:10 PM          

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