This article is the fourth in a four-part series on Malibu City Council elections from 1990 to 2000. This week’s focus is on the 1998 and 2000 elections. One was so close that the loser paid for a recount. The other was a landslide victory that changed the balance of the council.
By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times
By 1998, the large candidate field for city council elections was a thing of the distant past in Malibu. Just five people competed in that year’s race for two seats on the dais. Of those competitors, only three had a realistic chance of success. But a small field did not mean a controversial election would be avoided. Accusations were made of campaign violations, and this eventually led to the courtroom more than a year after the final ballot was counted.
Tired of frequently being at the short end of 3-2 council votes, John Harlow decided not to run for reelection. Harlow’s voting partner, Jeffrey Jennings, however, did enter the race. Planning commissioners Harry Barovsky and Tom Hasse joined him. The other candidates were Stephanie Smith and George Mathy.
Barovsky had an easy victory with 2,033 votes. He said after his win, “I will serve you with dignity, and I will try not to disappoint you. But if I do disappoint, remember I tried.” Barovsky only got to serve the people for a little less than two years because he died suddenly in March 2000.
Jennings and Hasse, who had also battled in 1994, remained in a tight competition throughout election night as the results trickled in. The night concluded with Hasse ahead by nine votes and 148 late-arriving absentee ballots remaining to be counted.
“Obviously, given a nine-vote lead, I’m not prepared to declare victory,” Hasse told The Malibu Times that night.
After the remaining ballots were counted before an eager crowd of 75 in a small city hall conference room, Hasse increased his lead to 29 votes. But the competition was not over. Jennings’ campaign paid just less than $1,000 for a recount. Times publisher Arnold G. York described the scene as four residents serving as judges, counting 3,615 ballots during a two-day period.
“Two attorneys, one from the Jennings camp and one from the Hasse camp, hovered over their shoulders, checking each ballot as it was read … One judge checked the ballot, one read the ballot and two recorded the votes. Then they switched roles,” York wrote.
In the end, nothing changed. Hasse’s lead remained at 29 votes. Last month, he recalled the lengthy process as each ballot was scrutinized, including 20 to 30 disputed ballots that received extra thorough examinations.
“When the 2000 presidential election happened, I already knew all about that,” Hasse said. “I learned about hanging chads about two years before the rest of the nation.”
Jennings said losing was especially frustrating because it was so close. “I remember thinking at the time, oh my god, I should have done some different things,” he said. Jennings said a mailer and video sent to voters a few days before Election Day portraying him as in the hands of developers were likely factors in his close loss.
Narrated by actor Jack Lemmon, the video used digital special effects to show Malibu’s natural beauty being covered by wall-to-wall apartment buildings, condos and shopping malls. “For its time, it was pretty sophisticated,” Jennings said of the video.
Hasse and Barovsky joined a council that was facing a major political divorce. The once tight alliance of Walt Keller, Joan House and Carolyn Van Horn had been falling apart since their 1996 landslide election victory. House distanced herself from her former allies.
In a December 1999 meeting that Barovsky and Hasse could not attend, House walked out of the room several times so there were not enough council members to make an official vote. One of the items included a development issue in which the applicant was asking for a continuance, but Van Horn and Keller refused to allow it.
The three declined to get into specifics during recent interviews on why their relationship deteriorated. But House insists she never changed, and remained somebody who was guided by the law.
“My way or the highway, and no shades of gray ever work because that isn’t life,” House said of Keller and Van Horn. “And that’s unfortunate, but that’s the way Mother Nature intended some people to be.”
Hasse, who managed Van Horn and House’s campaign in 1992, and also was involved in getting Keller elected two times, said he felt he was in a strange situation. “I found myself, not by anything that I had done, being the swing vote among the four people I had helped to elect and I thought of as allies,” Hasse said.
Also during this period, the court case against an independent Hasse-supporting political group from the 1998 election, called the Road Worriers, dragged on as the California Fair Political Practices Commission investigated. Criminal charges were even filed, but later tossed by a judge. City Attorney Christi Hogin also was involved in an investigation of the matter, leading to conflicts with some council members who already had problems with her. Rather than being fired, she resigned in the summer of 1999, taking a $227,000 golden parachute check with her.
About her resignation, Barovsky said, “It seems the perception is we gave Christi Hogin two choices: be fired or take the money. It’s unfortunate that this has happened in the midst of the city attorney’s investigation of campaign violations … It smells like something is rotten in Malibu.”
But Keller said getting rid of Hogin had to do with more than just her investigation. “She had done a lot of things that I thought were inappropriate,” he said.
Changing Malibu elects a new-look council
For the 2000 campaign, House had new allies on her side, battle-tested Jennings and Planning Commissioner Ken Kearsley. They faced Keller and Van Horn as well as Public Works Commissioner John Wall, who leaned toward the Keller/Van Horn side.
Malibu was a community adjusting to more families coming in with a desire for parks and other amenities. There was a cry for change, and this showed in the results for Malibu’s most noncompetitive election.
House was the top vote getter with 2,565 votes. She was followed by Jennings (2,484) and Kearsley (2,473). Many votes behind came Keller (1,314), Wall (1,255) and Van Horn (1,248).
“There was a really strong outpouring of support,” Jennings said. “It just went well from beginning to end.”
Keller said there was a great deal of “negative campaigning,” and he was unfairly portrayed as “anti-kid.” Van Horn attributed the loss to the fact that “a lot of the people who had worked for the ‘keeping Malibu a small town’ concept had passed away … That group of informed people was not around. There were still a few, but not like there was before.”
Keller and Van Horn say that The Times’ unfavorable editorial coverage toward them was a factor as well. On election night, both declined interviews with this paper. But Van Horn did make one comment: “Whatever is printed in The Malibu Times is trash. Your paper sucks.”
When told about that comment last month, Van Horn laughed and asked, “Did I really say that?”
But Van Horn, who had been on the council since it was initially created in 1990, said it was not a bitter loss for her.
“Part of me felt, ‘OK, Carolyn, you helped get it incorporated, you served on the council and you did the best you knew how. And now it’s time to move on.’”
1998 Election Results
Registered Voters: 8,725
Voter Turnout: 41.4%
(Top 2 elected)
Harry Barovsky: 2,033
Tom Hasse: 1,862
Jeffrey Jennings: 1,833
Stephanie Smith: 370
George Mathy: 21
2000 Election Results
Registered Voters: 8,591
Voter Turnout: 46.12%
(Top 3 elected)
Joan House: 2,565
Jeffrey Jennings: 2,484
Ken Kearsley: 2,473
Walt Keller: 1,314
John Wall: 1,255
Carolyn Van Horn: 1,248