Eric Mankin Strategies: You Can Win City Hall, Mother Jones, VI, no. X, December, 1981, p. 66. 1981, 1970s, 1950s, 1940s
"Here is the question: How typical an American city is Santa Monica, California? Ruth Yannatta Goldway, a thin outspoken, 36-year-old consumer activist, is the mayor. Her husband Derek Shearer, slightly more endomorphic, is a city planning commissioner, a university economist and the coauthor of Economic Democracy - essential reading for Left strategists. He managed a municipal campaign last April that swept every open slot on the city council and rent control board (there were five) in this 89,000-person enclave surrounded by Los Angeles and the Pacific. Said election wass a runaway, a sleighride, a 54 - 46 avalanche, despite a unified opposition, which redbaited the lefties unmercifully and outspent them three to one. It resulted in Left control - not just representation, but indisputable control - of city hall.
"It was no fluke; Santa Monica is mainstream, say Goldway and Schearer, and what worked here can work in cities across the country, or even on a national scale. "If you think of Reaganism as a right-wing populist strategy, there is a left-wing one," says Shearer, "and the biggest failure now is people not trying. I think that we were evidence that if you work hard enough on it, you can win."
"This is not a humble statement, certainly. Can it be a true one? A little social history is needed to help evaluate it, as Shearer and Goldway walk, holding hands, from city hall to a nearby restaurant, to make their argument. Forty years ago Santa Monica was a staid, Republican suburb, depicted by Raymond Chandler in his mysteries (under the name "Bay City") as a master repository of hypocritical suburban corruption, a place that could be bought whole, "box and tissue paper."
"In the 1950s, the city fathers ran a freeway through the bungalows and rezoned for apartments with an abandon unusual even in Southern California. The result was a city that came to be about 80 percent renters, the highest proportion of any city in the state.
"When rents began to soar in the late '70s, city government - still in the hands of the suburban squire/chamber of commerce axis - did a classic Marie Antoinette turn. (The people can't afford to rent? Let them buy condos?) Rent control became a matter of elemental self-defense for thousands. In a grueling series of electoral contests, the organization now known as Santa Monica Renters' Rights (SMRR) - for which Shearer is spokesperson - passed one of the stiffest rent control laws in the country and beat back repeated landlord attempts to water it down.
"By the time last spring's municipal elections came, SMRR had become very good at ground-level electioneering, widely thought obsolete in the era of TV and computerized mailing. "We developed," says Goldway, "a system to put our volunteers to work, so their efforts had impact."
"While SMRR rode rent control very hard, it did not shy away from other issues, notably crime. Shearer is very proud that "we weren't defensive. We always said crime has economic roots, but we didn't say the only real solution is full employment and national reform. There are a lot of things you can do if you build decent neighborhoods." Nor did it hurt that one of the SMRR city council candidates was a parole officer.
"The coalition that SMRR represents includes New Left veterans, Demos, feminists and environmentalists, along with union members and - absolutely crucial - old people. Santa Monica is very much a retirement community, and the rise in rents was literally a life-or-death issue for 60- and 70-year-olds trying to survive on Social Security and savings.
"Now that the coalition is in office, it is cautious about avoiding two pitfalls: substituting symbolic gestures for actual achievement and relying too much on municipal authority instead of organization back in the neighborhoods.
"Eight months after the election, there has, in fact, been little in the way of symbolic action - "We're not putting up a statue of Dan Ellsberg in front of the Rand Corporation [opposite city hall]," says Shearer - though there have been council resolutions about nuclear policy and El Salvador. Probably the most important vote clamped a moratorium on high-rise development, stopping cold a half-dozen nascent office buildings while the future of Santa Monica's downtown is rethought in the direction of fewer homes for cars and desks and more for people.
"The new council has also cut red tape to speed the opening of a farmer's market and will probably cut more to hasten the closing of an airport to make way for light industry, recreation and affordable housing. And Goldway has thrown the city's weight behind a consumer push to improve phone service.
"In 16 months, Goldway runs for reelection, and the Right will be coming back loaded for bear, probably with the help of out-of-town political hired guns. SMRR will have a record to defend, and it will have to find ways to cope with the numerous obstacles that angry people with money can throw at city government they don't like. Goldway herself, though, simply expects to win, and she expects to bring in two more councilmembers with her. As the sportswriters say - these people have come to play."