School bond measure overwhelmingly passes, Brownley replaces Pavley, and the power of a Santa Monica political group is evident in school board elections.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
Last Tuesday’s election proved once again the power of a Santa Monica political group as all eight candidates endorsed by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights were winners in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education and Santa Monica College Board of Trustees elections. Voters also overwhelmingly approved Measure BB, the SMMUSD’s $268 million facilities bond measure. And Julia Brownley was elected to her first term in the state Assembly as the representative of the 41st District, which includes Malibu.
Incumbent Emily Bloomfield was the top vote getter in the SMMUSD election. She received 16,622 votes, finishing more than 1,000 votes in front of runner-up Oscar de la Torre, who received 14,586 votes toward his election to a second term on the board.
“I think what I did was remind people how well the district has performed in the past four years,” Bloomfield said this week. “We have a momentum of success.”
The remaining two candidates elected to the board were Kelly McMahon Pye (14,512) and Barry Snell (13,239).
Incumbent Shane McLoud finished a distant fifth with 10,013 votes. He was followed by Sidonie Smith, who received 5,352 votes, despite dropping out of the campaign early on.
“I didn’t get out my message enough,” McLoud said this week. “I didn’t have enough mailers. I wasn’t aggressive and going to enough events.”
McLoud raised approximately $5,000, about $10,000 less than he received in his successful run in 2002. McLoud said this made it difficult for him to overcome the overwhelming odds of facing candidates backed by SMRR, which puts a great deal of money and manpower into campaigning for its endorsees.
“It’s hard to beat the SMRR machine,” McLoud said.
McLoud, an elementary school teacher in South Los Angeles, said he would now be able to concentrate more on his teaching. But he said he will remain active with the SMMUSD, attempting as a citizen activist to make changes he said the district still needs, including allowing principals to choose which instructors can teach at summer school and speeding up the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system that is currently only required for those hired since 2002.
Incumbent Nancy Greenstein received the most votes, 16,800, in the SMC election. This will be her second term on the board. Greenstein was the only incumbent who sought re-election this year. She campaigned with a slate of three others who were endorsed not only by SMRR, but also by the SMC teachers’ union, which has often been at odds with the school administration. The other candidates elected to the SMC board were Louise Jaffe (16,149), David Finkel (14,224) and Andrew Walzer (13,254).
Sunset Mesa resident Thomas Donner, the only candidate in either school board election residing in the Malibu area, finished in fifth place with 10,156 votes. Susanna Kim Bracke followed him with 5,783 votes.
“I lost because I was running by myself against a slate,” Donner said this week. “It’s not impossible [to win], but I think the dynamics were such that the slate had a lot of support to it, and it was support that carried a lot of weight.”
Measure BB was approved by 66.99 percent of the voters. The item needed 55 percent support for passage. The bond measure was advertised as a method to pay for various facility repairs throughout the district, and possibly the construction of new buildings and classrooms and the renovation of old ones.
Also last week, Democrat Brownley was elected to the 41st Assembly District seat, which is being vacated due to term limits by Fran Pavley.
Breakdown on votes
The current SMMUSD board president, who received 63.11 percent of the vote, was expected to have an easy win because a large percentage of the district population is Democratic. In the state Assembly race, Republican Tony Dolz received 33.68 percent support and Libertarian Conrad Stefan Fran Frankowski earned 3.21 percent of the vote without conducting any significant campaigning.
The results specifically from Malibu voters had some differences than the overall totals. In the SMMUSD race, Bloomfield still remained on top with 1,242 votes. She was followed by Pye (1,179), Snell (1,032), McLoud (967), de la Torre (918) and Smith (469). McLoud’s top-four finish in Malibu was likely due to his being the only candidate supported by the entire Malibu City Council, and the only one to receive the endorsement of Mayor Ken Kearsley.
Greenstein was the Malibu winner in the SMC election, receiving 1,295 votes. She was followed by Jaffe (1,275), Finkel (1,050), Donner (980), Walzer (944) and Bracke (622).
Measure BB received much less support in Malibu than it did districtwide. A little more than 57 percent of the city’s voters approved the bond, nearly 10 percentage points fewer than the amount of people who supported the bond district-wide.
Brownley did only slightly worse in Malibu than she did in the district as a whole, receiving 61.4 percent of the vote. Dolz earned 35.8 percent Malibu support. And a little less than three percent of those who voted in Malibu cast ballots for Frankowski.