Long Beach Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez on election night at the Hotel Maya celebrating early returns in the 33rd state Senate District race in Long Beach on Tuesday, March 26, 2019. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.
My earworm chart-topper for much of March was just the one line from ”What’s the Frequency, Kenneth,” by REM: “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy,” a line that was picked up from Richard Linklater’s 1990 film “Slacker.” It went through my head on a continual loop through much of the weird and depressing election season that preceded Tuesday’s special balloting for the 33rd Senate District.
Surprising no one, Long Beach’s 1st District Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez was the leading vote-getter, though her total of 8,700 votes fell short of avoiding a run-off with Republican Jack Guerrero, a councilman from Cudahy (which sounds like a synonym for “carpetbagger”), whose 4,224 was good enough to get him onto the final ballot with Gonzalez in June.
It was a campaign trail littered with unsenatorially bad behavior and a slate that was packed with candidates that shouldn’t be entrusted with running a carnival dime-pitch booth, never mind a mammoth district of more than 927,000 residents who deserve much better than this.
Or maybe they don’t.
It was a staggeringly low turnout Tuesday, with just 29,163 people voting out of a pool of 426,703 registered voters in the district. About 6.8 percent of eligible voters. Gonzalez’s 4,499 Facebook friends alone, in short, would’ve been enough to give her an edge over Guerrero.
To at least some degree, the relative handful of voters were choosing the lesser of 12 evils in the election. The eventual victor, for instance, was saddled with plenty of baggage, giving people a bouquet of reasons to vote for any of her 11 opponents: A DUI Gonzalez earned by scoring double the legal blood alcohol limit and smashing up her car on a guardrail back when she was then-1st District Councilman Robert Garcia’s deputy field assistant, coupled with a $1 million infusion of oil money from which she distanced herself, but which also benefited her campaign by paying for TV and print ads. She also managed to successfully evade most public forums, leaving the less popular candidates to fight over the leftovers without having the opportunity to debate the presumptive leader or capitalize on her drawbacks.
Leticia Wilson Vasquez sent out several Godfatherly emails to opponents, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and some Long Beach councilmembers, threatening legal action against anyone who poor-mouthed her or her record. She said the emails were meant to block “fake news.” She finished in eighth place with fewer than 1,500 votes. It’s true: You could look it up.
Thomas Jefferson Cares, who finished way down ballot with 725 votes, couldn’t get the attention of even this sorry electorate despite employing a spoofing email sent out that describes Gonzalez throwing a tuna steak at him in a supermarket, before he admits the incident was a bit of fiction meant to lure the recipient to read the balance of the email that described his platform, which wasn’t as entertaining as the fish-throwing story.
Seriously, the whole process has been a feast of snakes. Was the incredibly low voter turnout a sorry indication of civic apathy, or was it mass withdrawal in disgust?
And now we move along to the June final, in which the accountant Guerrero, very much a Republican in a very heavily Democratic district, faces a nearly vertical uphill climb. Being big in Cudahy might not be enough, and if Gonzalez can maintain her schedule—which is so event-packed it precludes her appearance at public debates—she should have no trouble winning, which, of course, sets the city up for yet another expensive election to fill her seat in Long Beach’s powerful 1st District.
Hopefully, it will be a better election than this one. It can’t be any worse.
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
Senate election was as sorry as its candidates
My earworm chart-topper for much of March was just the one line from ”What’s the Frequency, Kenneth,” by REM: “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy,” a line that was picked up from Richard Linklater’s 1990 film “Slacker.” It went through my head on a continual loop through much of the weird and depressing election season that preceded Tuesday’s special balloting for the 33rd Senate District.
Surprising no one, Long Beach’s 1st District Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez was the leading vote-getter, though her total of 8,700 votes fell short of avoiding a run-off with Republican Jack Guerrero, a councilman from Cudahy (which sounds like a synonym for “carpetbagger”), whose 4,224 was good enough to get him onto the final ballot with Gonzalez in June.
It was a campaign trail littered with unsenatorially bad behavior and a slate that was packed with candidates that shouldn’t be entrusted with running a carnival dime-pitch booth, never mind a mammoth district of more than 927,000 residents who deserve much better than this.
Or maybe they don’t.
It was a staggeringly low turnout Tuesday, with just 29,163 people voting out of a pool of 426,703 registered voters in the district. About 6.8 percent of eligible voters. Gonzalez’s 4,499 Facebook friends alone, in short, would’ve been enough to give her an edge over Guerrero.
To at least some degree, the relative handful of voters were choosing the lesser of 12 evils in the election. The eventual victor, for instance, was saddled with plenty of baggage, giving people a bouquet of reasons to vote for any of her 11 opponents: A DUI Gonzalez earned by scoring double the legal blood alcohol limit and smashing up her car on a guardrail back when she was then-1st District Councilman Robert Garcia’s deputy field assistant, coupled with a $1 million infusion of oil money from which she distanced herself, but which also benefited her campaign by paying for TV and print ads. She also managed to successfully evade most public forums, leaving the less popular candidates to fight over the leftovers without having the opportunity to debate the presumptive leader or capitalize on her drawbacks.
Leticia Wilson Vasquez sent out several Godfatherly emails to opponents, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and some Long Beach councilmembers, threatening legal action against anyone who poor-mouthed her or her record. She said the emails were meant to block “fake news.” She finished in eighth place with fewer than 1,500 votes. It’s true: You could look it up.
Thomas Jefferson Cares, who finished way down ballot with 725 votes, couldn’t get the attention of even this sorry electorate despite employing a spoofing email sent out that describes Gonzalez throwing a tuna steak at him in a supermarket, before he admits the incident was a bit of fiction meant to lure the recipient to read the balance of the email that described his platform, which wasn’t as entertaining as the fish-throwing story.
Seriously, the whole process has been a feast of snakes. Was the incredibly low voter turnout a sorry indication of civic apathy, or was it mass withdrawal in disgust?
And now we move along to the June final, in which the accountant Guerrero, very much a Republican in a very heavily Democratic district, faces a nearly vertical uphill climb. Being big in Cudahy might not be enough, and if Gonzalez can maintain her schedule—which is so event-packed it precludes her appearance at public debates—she should have no trouble winning, which, of course, sets the city up for yet another expensive election to fill her seat in Long Beach’s powerful 1st District.
Hopefully, it will be a better election than this one. It can’t be any worse.
Tim Grobaty
Tim Grobaty is a columnist and the Opinions Editor for the Long Beach Post. You can reach him at 562-714-2116, email [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter and Grobaty on Facebook.
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