The election light is green
The Greenlight candidate kickoff Monday night offered a fairly
clear look at what voters should expect to see this fall from the
slate of four Greenlight-approved hopefuls for the Newport Beach City
Council.
The four, for those who missed the news, are Allan Beek, who will
be running against the city’s former public works director, Don Webb,
to replace termed-out Norma Glover; Madelene Arakelian, who’s set to
battle Mayor Tod Ridgeway; Rick Taylor, who will face off with
Councilman Gary Adams; and Dick Nichols, who is seeking the seat of
termed-out Dennis O’Neil.
Fittingly, there seemed to be four main themes highlighting the
evening of fund-raising and hors d’oeuvre-eating: the need for new
knowledge on the council, an against-developers approach, a pledge to
vote on city issues as regular residents would, and an emphasis on
the candidates’ ties to Newport Beach.
The final of these is probably best summed up simply by Allan Beek
being on the ticket. (Ticket being used just as a shorthand way of
looking at these candidates, who Greenlight leaders are firmly noting
will be independent fixtures on the council, just of like-mind, not
lock-step. It also seems apropos to the Greenlight traffic metaphor.)
Beek, whose family is a Newport Beach -- specifically Balboa Island
-- fixture, has ties to the city as deep as anyone. As Hart put it
when introducing him, “He’s been involved in every major issue that’s
affected Newport Beach.”
The Newport Beach ties of the other candidates -- Taylor’s work
for eight years on fighting John Wayne Airport expansion, Nichols’ 20
years working with Corona del Mar community associations -- were also
on clear display.
It’s a campaign slogan that works well with the pledge to vote as
residents would: While emphasizing that the candidates know and are
deeply rooted in Newport Beach, they are still going to present
themselves as “of the people.”
But, judging by the rhetoric of the evening, the refrain voters
are most likely to hear is that the present council is tied too
closely to developers. Former Mayor Evelyn Hart went so far as to
describe the current mayor as “developer Tod Ridgeway,” a nifty
description given the short history of Greenlight as David versus the
Goliath of the developers.
Given the safe bet the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, along
with a number of development interests, will back Ridgeway, Adams and
other candidates running against the Greenlight ticket, Newport Beach
residents will have the most clear-cut council decision in recent
elections. They can essentially vote one way or another or the city’s
future.
The end result of this should be both an election in which
significant, important issues -- how to handle growth and traffic,
what residents believe defines their quality of life -- in the city
are debated and an election full of lively political machinations,
maneuvering and maybe mudslinging.
If you’re skeptical of that, you should have heard the fiery
emotion of Arakelian when she said to Monday’s crowd: “I need your
vote. I want to beat the [heck] out of Ridgeway.”
* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)
574-4233 or by e-mail at steven.cahn@latimes.com.
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