A home-grown political action group gathers together to help defeat a $15 million open-land measure, but loses in its pick for city council candidate.
By Mitchell Tanen/Special to The Malibu Times
The distribution of local opinion on issues that affect Malibu is unpredictable. The most staunch local-control advocates, for example, can be influenced by outsiders’ money. The most fiercely land-loyal residents oppose measures that would help ensure the sanctity of the scenery they cherish. Those who stand the most to gain from development, spurn it. You can not rely on what is expected.
Then again, there’s nothing predictable about Malibu. Or its political pundits or practitioners, for that matter.
You will not find a clearer case of the irregularity of the local political mode than by looking at its politically active. Malibu’s most recently visible, audible and effective civic group, Lily’s Caf Steering Committee, makes that point.
Lily’s Caf Steering Committee is the name adopted by a coffee klatch that, after meeting every weekday morning for coffee and conversation for nearly 30 years at various locations, found themselves on the frontline of a hot political issue. The official-sounding epithet is merely a formality (and subject to change to protect their friends at Lily’s from any collateral damage from their actions) but the potency of these 96 folks is undeniable. Lily’s Caf at 8 a.m. has become a barnstorming stop for politicos selling everything from public school bonds to land usage plans.
Four of the five people who are currently running for City Council have made Lily’s a stop on the campaign trail. The group has endorsed candidate Beverly Taki.
This is not your Aunt Betty’s coffee klatch. This is bare-knuckled, dirty-kneed, take a stand, raise a stink if you do not like something politics. This is a group that gets results-most of the time.
Despite years of sharing the company and coffee, it was not until Proposition K came along in 2001 that the group was sanctioned. Under the guidance of committee treasurer and former Malibu mayor, John Harlow, the group registered with the state and was christened the Lily’s Caf Steering Committee after the place where they happened to hitch their horses every morning. Their business was social-they had an informal forum for friends and neighbors to meet to discuss everything from scandals to grandchildren.
While politics always complemented the coffee, Proposition K changed everything.
Proposition K was the bond floated by the Malibu City Council before voters asking for $15 million dollars for the improvement, creation and maintenance of recreational lands in Malibu. To hear committee chairman and mouthpiece Tom Fakehany explain it, they are all naturalists and conservationists to their roots-the members of the committee loved the idea of the bond but did not like the way it was written. For them, the ambiguity of the bond’s language was a governmental slight of hand-they wanted to know exactly what the $15 million would add to the existing 35 percent of designated open space in Malibu. They wanted baseball fields included in the text of the measure. Doug O’Brien, vice-chair of the steering committee and a man who has been involved with youth athletics for many years, saw it as a glaring omission.
When their efforts to steer the proposition toward a draft that satisfied all parties failed, the committee took action. With $3,000 of hard money, they launched a pamphlet-campaign to inform the voters of Malibu of what they thought would certainly be an egregious use of political power if the measure passed. Despite wrangling over the election’s date, the changing of polling places and an opponent with more resources, the measure made it to the ballot in a one-issue special election. The measure was defeated in what was one of the largest voter turnouts in recent Malibu history.
While drawing the causal link between the committee’s involvement and the proposition’s defeat would be speculative due to the other groups and individuals who took issue with the Proposition, one thing is irrefutable: the Lily’s Caf Steering Committee made an awfully big noise. Which is nothing extraordinary for these men and women. The affable folks who squeeze elbow-to-elbow around the long row of tables along the west wall of Lily’s Caf every weekday morning bring as much volume to the quiet caf as they do business. A mix of professions, backgrounds and political affiliations, ranging in age from 35 to 80, this is a group that relishes a good fight. As one gentleman member of the committee put it, “The death of debate is the death of freedom.”
“We’re not trying to change anyone’s mind,” Fakehany stated. “We’re just trying to get people politically active, locally involved … but we all leave as friends.”
Which is not always the case with those who favored Proposition K. As a result of their involvement with Proposition K the group has been called everything from child-unfriendly to curmudgeons, the subject of angry letters to the editor and at least one boycott.
Their detractors aside, the group shows no signs of slowing or switching to herbal tea. “We’re not going to let our milk go sour before we’ve had a chance to enjoy it,” Fakehany warns.
And that spells trouble for school bond Propositions X and Y.