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.