CommentsELECTION WATCH - When I came to Venice forty years ago, the community was in city council district six, which also encompassed the predominately white Westchester area and the majority-Black Crenshaw district.
The council representative was Pat Russell, who became just the fourth woman to serve on the fifteen-member body when she won a special election in 1969.
Venice was known for its diversity in terms of ethnicity, age, and economic status. It was also a hotbed of political activism, and sometimes a thorn in the side of its elected representatives. Real estate development, then as now, was a major issue, with gentrification driving up home prices and rents and long-time residents being pushed out in favor of people willing and able to spend money to live in a neighborhood within walking distance of the beach.
Resentment of well-to-do newcomers displacing working class and elderly residents helped fuel a relative rarity in city politics, an incumbent councilperson losing a bid for re-election. In this case, environmental activist and Venice resident Ruth Galanter defeated Russell in her 1987 bid for a fifth term.
Galanter was re-elected three times without serious difficulty, but after re-districting in 2002, CD6 and its representative were moved lock, stock and barrel to the east San Fernando Valley. Venice became part of CD11, which stretched east to Mar Vista and parts of West L.A., north to Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, and south to Playa Del Rey and Westchester. Cindy Miscikowski, the district's incumbent and a Brentwood resident, became Venice's unelected council representative for the next three years.
Miscikowski's term marked a major eruption of the issue that has stirred impassioned and often-poisonous debate in Venice ever since, which is the highly visible presence of the homeless and the question of what to do about them. She was succeeded in 2005 by Bill Rosendahl, a loquacious and sometimes-blustery former cable TV executive from Mar Vista, who somehow managed a balancing act between noisy groups with drastically differing ideas of how to address the homelessness issue.
For example, he appeased homeowners enraged about the presence of the homeless living in campers and cars on the streets by supporting overnight parking restrictions, but also mollified homeless advocates by supporting St. Joseph Center, the major nonprofit providing homeless services in the community, even though that organization was a major irritant for a vocal faction who considered it a magnet drawing more of the homeless to Venice.
Mike Bonin, his chief of staff who succeeded him 2013, had no such luck. As more and more tents went up along the Venice boardwalk and some major streets, and more and more cries were raised about drug use and crime related to the encampments, Bonin's popularity plunged.
Part of this was undoubtedly a matter of personality, the fact that Bonin wasn't a clone of the generally well-liked Rosendahl, who declined to run for a third term in 2013 after being diagnosed with cancer. Rosendahl loved to talk and clearly enjoyed the rituals of politics like mingling with people and shaking hands. If you wanted a hug, Rosendahl was your man.
Conversely, Bonin struck some people as aloof and thin-skinned and there were complaints early on in his tenure, at least in Venice, about his office being unresponsive to constituents. Like Rosendahl, he displayed a strong social consciousness and commitment to progressive ideals, but he was never able to smooth the churning waters of emotion aroused by the homelessness issue.
A recall effort, with heavy financial support from real estate interests, got underway in 2021. It narrowly failed to gather enough signatures to make the ballot, but the fact that some 25,000 district voters signed it was writing on the wall too indelible to ignore. Shortly thereafter, Bonin went public with the news that he had suffered from depression, and announced that he wouldn't be running for a third term.
Bonin was excoriated for refusing to support the clearing of encampments and establishment of no-camping zones around schools and parks unless the city could provide housing for their inhabitants. His advocacy for permanent supportive housing for the homeless was painted as an eagerness to squander taxpayer money for a remedy that was no more than a bandage on the festering sore destroying the community. Rising crime, a phenomenon almost everywhere in the city, was blamed in CD11 and especially in Venice, on Bonin and his alleged tolerance for theft, assault, and other crimes committed by the homeless.
Who would want such a thankless job, when the issue of homelessness is one that, to put it mildly, defies an easy solution. In CD11, the answer is eight people, six men and two women who are apparently ready to step forth to slay the dragon whose flaming breath fatally scorched Mike Bonin and cast a pall of gloom and anger over the entire community.
At a recent candidates' forum sponsored by the East Venice Neighborhood Association, some of the candidates were at pains to insure those watching the online event that they were NOT Mike Bonin.
Apparently, his ghost will be making noises in the election campaign, and vanquishing it will be part of candidates' jobs, the way some Democratic candidates in red and swing states tried to disassociate themselves from Barack Obama in the 2010 midterm elections.
As for the homelessness issue itself, most of the standard nostrums were aired by the CD11 candidates. More mental health and substance abuse services, more shelters, more housing (although housing that will somehow cost far less than what has been built and planned thus far.) The big question—how does the city of Los Angeles come up with the huge amounts of money to pay for this?—was for all practical purposes unanswered.
In the mind of this viewer, the forum didn't offer a choice of the candidate with the best ideas, but the candidate best able to move beyond anti-Bonin sentiment and unite the community behind initiatives that will benefit everyone, including the homeless, who are part of the district's constituency whether or not people want to regard them as such.
Will it be those most able to genuinely display the "progressive" label, like attorneys Greg Good and Erin Darling, and public schoolteacher Soni Lloyd? Will it be someone seeking to position themselves as a consensus candidate, like attorney and area planning commission president Mike Newhouse? Will it be a long-time Venice resident active in community affairs like neighborhood council president Jim Murez? Will it be two attorneys touting their experience in navigating complex bureaucracies and simply getting things done, like Allison Holdorff Polhill and Traci Park? Will it be Mat Smith, who touts his military service as giving him the means to make the tough decisions needed to deal with homelessness and other district issues?
The most likely scenario is that none of the eight will get a majority in the June 7 primary, sending the top two vote-getters to a runoff in November. As a longtime Venice resident who has both observed and participated in community affairs and bears some scars to show for it, my only advice to them is, "Be careful what you wish for."
(Dennis Hathaway is a former member of the Venice Neighborhood Council, past president of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, and author of "The Battle of Lincoln Place: An Epic Fight By Tenants to Save Their Homes," a history of Lincoln Place Apartments in Venice to be published this summer. He can be reached at www.ddhathaway.com/contact)
