11:00am | Last night’s Arts-Focused Candidate Forum, co-sponsored by the Arts Council for Long Beach and Arts for LA, drew a broad spectrum of community members to the Museum of Latin American Art. Moderated by Long Beach Community Foundation Vice President Sandy VandenBerge, candidates were asked prepared questions by her, then took questions from the audience.
The evening opened with Felton Williams and Ricardo Linarez, who are running for a seat on the board of the Long Beach Unified School District. They were followed by Area 4 trustee candidates for the Long Beach Community College District Governing Board, Doug Otto and Davina Keiser.
Lastly, candidates for the even numbered council districts were invited to the forum. In attendance were Janet Ballantyne and Suja Lowenthal, both running for the 2nd District seat, John Watkins who’s running in the 4th District, and Lillian Kawasaki, a candidate for the 8th District. Since 6th District representative Dee Andrews is running unopposed, I guess he wasn’t invited.
Strangely, 2nd District candidate Mike Kamer, 4th District candidates Patrick O’Donnell and Daryl Supernaw, and 8th District candidates Al Austin and Gustavo Rivera did not attend, even though several had previously committed to being there.
The moderated questions were fairly broad, and all four Council candidates comported themselves with style and grace. A few seemed more comfortable on stage, but all came across as candid and engaged. Questions from the audience were far ranging, with some focused on specific challenges people in the creative community have faced, to questions about policy and code enforcement.
The cold, harsh reality, however, is that, no matter who wins, a shrinking budget and increasing debt will force our elected officials to make deeper and deeper cuts to all City services. That means, however, that many significant opportunities for supporting arts and culture through reduced municipal restrictions can now be seriously explored.
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I recorded the entirety of the hour long Council candidate discussion. The recording is not good. The room is very reverberant, and the intelligibility of some comments is limited. Still, one can discern most of the discussion and, if you weren’t able to attend last night, you may gain some insight into the candidates.