Giving it another go sans office

Dave Brooks

Keith Bohr is a politician without an office.

Whether it’s discussing the minute details of the city’s retail

market or taking a few minutes to put on his best Surf City campaign

face, Bohr seems the epitome of the California candidate.

There’s only one problem: He’s never won an election. This year

Bohr is taking his second stab at a seat on the City Council, an

office that he painfully lost in 2002 by just 210 votes, bringing him

to a fifth-place finish in a race where only the top four candidates

were victorious.

“He came pretty close two years ago,” Councilwoman Jill Hardy

said. “To be successful, any candidate needs to meet as many voters

as possible to let people know what they’re all about.”

Like other politicians, Bohr did everything he was supposed to on

the campaign trail. He has experience, both as a former Huntington

Beach Economic Development staff member and as a successful real

estate consultant -- he has a bachelors and masters degree to boot.

He posted dozens of signs, won big endorsements and spent lots of

money -- nearly double the money nearly anyone else had spent,

including $20,000 out of his own pocket.

“I think I was just missing a grass-roots component,” he said.

Bohr even had his own political scandal. After losing the

election, he was appointed to the Planning Commission by Councilman

Gil Coerper, who beat him out for the seat, but was later asked to

resign after complaints aired that he checked on the status of

several planning permits for former clients, an act seen by some as

inappropriate for a commissioner.

Bohr maintains that he never acted illegally and said he was

vindicated by a Fair Political Practices Commission decision not to

pursue an investigation. He believes it’s time to move on.

“I wonder how much longer this is going to appear as a tagline

every time my name is mentioned,” he said.

The experience has served as an important political lesson for

Bohr, who said he thinks Surf City is often unfairly characterized as

corrupt.

“You can’t do anything in Huntington Beach without people

scrutinizing your every action under a microscope,” he said. “It’s

unfair to paint everyone with a broad brush stroke.”

Take the sports complex fiasco for example, he said, where the

city paid out nearly $1 million to a contractor who later abandoned

the project. “Obviously, someone dropped the ball on that one, but

overall, you have to recognize that city staff does a good job,” he

said.

If elected to council, Bohr said he would challenge staff members

to re-energize the city’s retail sector and streamline development as

a means to generate tax revenue. Pointing toward the city’s growing

collection of dilapidated strip malls, Bohr said he would like to see

the economic development department survey property owners to

determine their needs and ways they can improve.

“That doesn’t mean cutting out the design-review process but

making the whole experience less stressful,” he said. “This is the

financial future of the city, and we depend on those revenues. We

have to do everything we can to encourage businesses to succeed.”