Split Decision : Katz May Hold Swing Vote in Santa Monica

The balance of power in Santa Monica apparently shifted to independent City Councilman Alan Katz this week as the city’s rival political factions came out of a heated and extremely close City Council election with three seats each.

The final results of the election will not be known until the city clerk’s office gets a complete a count of absentee and defective ballots. But it is clear that Katz handily defeated neighborhood activist Zora Margolis in a race for a special two-year term.

If the final tally does not alter results in the other races, Katz, who received about 80% of the vote, will cast the deciding vote on issues that divide the city’s political groups--Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights and the All Santa Monica Coalition.

Evening the Scales

The coalition held the majority of the council seats until Tuesday. But David Finkel of the liberal Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights apparently evened the scales by defeating incumbent David Epstein of the All Santa Monica Coalition.

Epstein’s allies, Mayor Christine E. Reed and Councilman William H. Jennings were victorious. In an extremely tight race, fewer than 1,200 votes separated the highest- and lowest-ranking candidates in the election.

The two political groups never have shared the reins of power before. People close to Santa Monica politics predicted that Katz would quickly emerge as the City Hall power broker if official returns confirm the even split on the council.

His first crucial vote would be in choosing the council member who would serve as mayor. Katz said he does not know whom he would support.

No Conjectures on Choice

“I’ll talk to a lot of people,” Katz said on Wednesday. “I may leave the country. What can I do? I’m not going to get into conjecture at this point.”

Katz received 19,624 votes, based on unofficial and incomplete returns. Margolis, who ran a bare-bones campaign, received 4,632 votes.

There was no symbolic winner in the race between Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights and the All Santa Monica Coalition for the remaining three at-large council seats. Both groups had hoped to emerge with a clear mandate from the city’s voters.

Reed, who has served on the council since 1975, was the top vote-getter, based on the unofficial returns, with 15,904. Jennings came in second with 15,449 votes, and Finkel was third with 15,335.

Dolores Press, an ally of Finkel, was edged out of the winners column by just 46 votes in the early tabulations, receiving 15,289. Epstein came in fifth with 14,901, and Julie Lopez Dad, another ally of Finkel and Press, came in sixth with 14,763.

The race started quietly, with each group promoting a pro-rent control and anti-commercial development stance. But in the final days Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights accused the coalition of tricking the voters by distributing pro-tenant campaign mail that closely resembled its own.

Reed, in an interview Wednesday, called the charges ridiculous. She said the race was a victory for the individuals who won, but not for either group.

“People apparently made personal choices among us,” Reed said. “I was surprised. Everyone in the room was surprised. . . . I won and Bill (Jennings) won and David (Finkel) won. And I guess the people in Santa Monica won.”

Jennings said he was elated over his reelection but was puzzled as to why voters returned him and Reed to the council while failing to support fellow coalition member David Epstein.

Puzzled at Result

“I do not have a good feel of why Chris and I were elected and David was not,” he said. “Especially since, when you look at the narrow vote spread, it is obvious that people were voting in slates.”

Jennings said that the loss of Epstein’s seat was more of a personal loss for Epstein than a defeat for the coalition of three incumbents running against the renters’ rights candidates.

He added that he did not believe that Epstein’s defeat was the result of voter confusion over which candidate belonged to which slate.

Jennings said that he did not know what the split on the council will mean for Santa Monica.

“I don’t know whether the split will be hard or if there will be some real attempt to reach agreement between the parties,” he said.

Difficult Life

The key to reaching a majority on the new council could be the vote of Alan Katz, Jennings said. And that could make life difficult for Katz, he added.

“I would not want to be in his position,” Jennings said. “At first you would see Alan as a kingmaker with all kinds of power. But whomever he doesn’t go along with will run a candidate against him next time. He will always be in the spotlight and that is a lot of pressure.”

As for who will become mayor, Jennings said that he does not know how the council will vote. But he made it clear that he is interested in the job.

Epstein, who was elected to the council in 1983 in an upset of liberal Mayor Ruth Yannatta Goldway, said he was disappointed but not totally surprised by his defeat.

‘Two Drugged Spiders’

Epstein was seen as the weakest of the three coalition candidates because he has served only one term. He said the election indicates that voters are turned off by slate politics.

“The two factions are like two drugged spiders in a bottle attacking each other and spending close to half a million dollars,” Epstein said. “I would hope that we can learn to conduct business in other ways.”

The All Santa Monica Coalition, a moderate political faction that came together in 1982, has controlled City Hall for the past two years. The fourth coalition member, Councilman Herb Katz, was not up for reelection this year.

The group spent more than $250,000 on the campaign, more than twice what their opponents spent.

Difficult to Analyze

Finkel said the apparently narrow margins of victory in the council races and the fact that both sides were disappointed in the number of seats they won made Tuesday’s election difficult to analyze.

“It seemed like a Mexican standoff,” Finkel said. “Neither group was able to rise above the crest.”

Finkel attributed the Renters’ Rights group’s inability to take at least one more council seat, based on early returns, to the All Santa Monica Coalition’s last-minute campaign literature stressing its support for rent control.

Renters’ Rights members have claimed that the coalition tried to sway votes from the renters faction by issuing mailers with slogans and positions that closely resembled their own literature.

‘Calculated to Create Confusion’

“The mailers were undoubtedly calculated by them to create confusion,” Finkel said. “I hope that it will be apparent to all that the reason we were not able to overcome as a group was because of the identity crisis tenant voters had due to the literature that made everybody look like the tenants’ rights team.

“It was a successful campaign strategy on their part and is how they retained two seats,” he said. “If it wasn’t for that, I think they would have been blown away.”

And Finkel said that if his analysis is correct, Alan Katz “should concede that the tenants’ side should have a mayor and vote for Dennis Zane. He has been our leader in this campaign.”

Finkel predicted that the city’s new council will eventually have to learn to break ranks and forge alliances on different issues.

‘Left Us in the Lurch’

“The voters sort of left us in the lurch,” he said. “What is going to happen is that we will have to figure out the issues that are most dear to us and form a new consensus on each issue.”

For former Councilwoman Press, Tuesday’s narrow defeat hurt.

“To put yourself forward as a candidate and be rejected is deeply painful,” she said. “But I hope to meet such adversity with dignity and humor.”

Press did not see anything humorous about the coalition’s mailers, which she said probably accounted for her margin of defeat, which was a little more than 100 votes.

“I am very angry because of the nature of the Reed faction’s election campaign was one of fraud and deception and completely unethical behavior designed to confuse the voter,” she said.

Dad could not be reached for comment.

Swept Rent Board Race

Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights retained their lock on the Rent Control Board by sweeping the three seats up for election.

Susan Packer Davis received 19,854 votes, Wayne Bauer received 19,064 votes and Eileen Lipson gathered 19,100 votes. The lone challenger, independent Thomas Allison had 7,350 votes.

In the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees race, unofficial returns Wednesday showed that challenger Pat Nichelson won election along with three incumbents, Colin C. Petrie, Fred L. Beteta and Carole L. Currey.

This will be Beteta’s fourth term and Petrie’s and Currey’s third. A fourth incumbent, James M. Bambrick, lost his bid for reelection unofficially by 98 votes.

Leadership and Expertise

Nichelson, chairman of religious studies at California State University, Northridge, has pledged to bring new leadership and added expertise in state education issues to the Santa Monica College board.

He and Carole E. Hetrick, an administrator at Cal State Los Angeles, were endorsed by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights and the Committee for a Quality College Board.

The vote count Wednesday reporting was Petrie, 17,267; Beteta, 17,134; Currey, 16,915; Nichelson, 16,696; Bambrick, 16,598; Hetrick, 16,483, and Robert M. Neff, 13,315.

Eight candidates competed for four seats on the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of Education. Incumbents Della Barrett and Bob Holbrook won their second four-year terms. Dan Ross and Patricia Hoffman also won.

Leading Vote-Getter

Holbrook led all voters with 17,947 votes. Ross had 16,861 votes, Barrett had 15,636, Hoffman 14,780, Stephanie Oringer 14,290, Dorothy Koutouratsas 14,009, Catherine Williams 12,929 and Susan Bogdanow 9,653.

Holbrook and Barrett were backed by Best Education for Students Today, a moderate slate of candidates which had the backing of the city’s major homeowner groups.

With the election of Hoffman and Ross, five of the board’s seven members will have the support of the Committee for a Responsive School Board, a liberal slate backed by the Santa Monicans for Renters Rights. Board members Connie Jenkins, Mary Kay Kamath and Peggy Lyons were previously supported by the committee slate.

“It is time to put the campaign behind us and get on with the business of the schools and I think we will be able to work together,” Barrett said.

Hoffman said: “I’m looking forward to working with them. As is the history of the board for the last four years most of the votes have been 7-0 (unanimous) votes and I think that will continue.”

Times staff writers Barbara Baird, John L. Mitchell and Claudia Puig contributed to this story.