9:00am | Since 2001, Steve James has served as president of the Long Beach Police Officers Association, the union representing the sworn officers of the Long Beach Police Department. During his tenure, James has become a very visible and vocal representative of his membership in the local political arena. Not surprising given that the POA, according to some, is one of the most powerful labor forces in the city and in an election year, one of the most sought after endorsements by candidates. lbpost.com reporter Keith Higginbotham sat down with Steve James to ask his thoughts on Tuesday’s election.
What was your general impression of Tuesday’s election results?
I don’t think that I had major preconceived notions going into the election, so I don’t want to say that I was shocked. But, overall, I think it went pretty typical of a lot of elections. We saw incumbents do well and we learned more about write-in campaigns.
Normally it is very difficult to beat an incumbent, but this race was very interesting with two incumbents running write-in campaigns—with one prevailing to a runoff and one being defeated outright.
From my perspective there was no real shock, no real disbelief—I think it was just very typical of what does happen in most elections.
In the 9th District Council race, write-in incumbent Val Lerch raised nearly 40 percent more money than his primary challenger, Steve Neal, and by all accounts is popular with his constituents. And yet, Neal won. Does this tell us anything?
I don’t know if it tells us any one thing. We can look at a lot of different things to try to analyze or guess, but we may never know the answers for sure.
The main thing, though, is it shows pretty clearly that it is very difficult to not have your name on the ballot. It also shows that in some districts a write-in could be more problematic than in others, especially given the number of voters that you had turn up in the 9th district on Tuesday.
[Ed. note: According to the City Clerk, 2,751 votes were cast for the 9th District candidates—roughly half as many votes as cast in the 7th District and 5th District races, and 60-percent less than the votes cast in the 3rd District race.]
Going back to the first part of your question, it is certainly easier for incumbents to raise money. The reality is that incumbents are out in the community doing things for four years prior to an election. They are out there and they are known better. They are interacting with the community on a daily basis—either them or their staff.
I can say after watching this [process] for nearly two decades—whether you like your council person or don’t like your council person—I have yet to see any council person who isn’t working an exorbitant amount of hours in and around their district.
That is just not typically the case with a person running against an incumbent. The [challenger] might be involved in the community, but it is very difficult to be involved in a district to the same level that a council member is. And that gives the incumbent a tremendous advantage. It is just an unintended consequence of being committed to your district that it will help you come election time.
One last thing that I think the race in the 9th showed, and I think it was also evident in the last [2006] election when Val and Steve ran a close race, is that you can not discount the impact that traditional labor had in the race this time. I haven’t seen any numbers on how much labor spent, but I certainly heard that they were out in the district in force. I can’t help but think that labor’s role played a big part in the outcome of the race.
[Ed. note: Steve Neal was endorsed by nearly 20 labor groups and union locals, while Val Lerch listed none. The POA did not endorse any candidate in the 9th District race.]
Five of the seven candidates the POA endorsed during the campaign won on Tuesday, with a sixth headed for a June run-off. Were there any surprises or concerns you had with the results?
Was I happy with the results of the election? Well, it’s not really up to me to be happy or upset. Elections are an opportunity for [the POA] to get messages out to people. Who am I to be upset with the will of the voters? I don’t think that is my role. But I feel confident that we were able to get some good messages out to the community, and messages that I think resonated, and overall had a very strong impact.
What were those messages?
Primarily, the safety message. I think this was an opportunity for us to get out and deal with the issue of public safety. By getting out and talking about what is important or who we think would do the best job for public safety, we are trying to make sure that the constituents and the council people themselves pay attention to the issue.
We are about half way through a budget that cut the police department by almost 10 percent of its sworn staff. Even though we cut it by almost 10 percent, as we go into the new budget process, we still find the police department down about 30 positions. So I think we need to let people know that we do have safety concerns.
Now one or two council persons might be saying that crime is down—well, that is probably factually correct—but what doesn’t get mentioned is that we are now at 915 [positions] and a year and half ago we were budgeted at 1,020. Crime is not going to stay down if that continues.
So we get out and try to share our message with those that we think will help us try to keep crime down, or at least limit the amount that crime goes up and manage the rate of crime.
Unfortunately, right now, I think [the city] could be missing the boat.
Do you think that the victory of so many incumbents on Tuesday tells us more about the electorate or more about the lack of viable challengers?
I think it is a bit of both, but I would lean more toward a lack of candidates. I mean, look at what you go through if you decide to run for office. The political process is not friendly—it can be very nasty. For example, in the political world, you make one statement that you wish you could retract and you can live with it the rest of your political life. Any transgression you have had in your life is going to be vetted in the public if you run for public office. Sometimes I think we expect our politicians to be absolutely perfect, when if fact they come from us—with the same human flaws that we all have. But in a campaign, those flaws get put out in front of everyone in the community. That could discourage anyone from running.
How has the POA addressed this lack of potential candidates?
For years, we have tried to help develop candidates. We interview all of the candidates that run for City Council, and often times we come across people who look like they would be phenomenal but they are so brand new to the community or to getting involved that there is really no way they can win the council race.
So, what we do is encourage them to get involved in some of the committees and commissions within the city, because we look at them as somebody who could do good for the city—but perhaps, right now, can not win a council race.
A lot of times, and this touches on your previous question, when we encourage these people, by the time they go out and get involved and see what they are setting themselves up for, they say “Gosh, I don’t want any part of this—I don’t want every part of my life being exposed in public.” So, I think it does make it difficult to get some of the better people to run.
Overall, the incentive is very low. [City Council] is full-time hours—often times more than full-time—for a part-time salary and then they get second guessed on everything they do.
So, it is very difficult to find really good people who want to step up and say, “I would like an unbelievable amount of scrutiny in my life by everybody in this community. I want everybody watching everything I do and criticizing me to the nth degree”
You just aren’t going to find people to say that. So, it is hard to find great candidates, even more so when the race is against an incumbent.
The POA endorsed Tonia Reyes-Uranga in the 7th District. What do you think will happen in the 7th District run-off in June?
Well, I don’t want to handicap it, but I think that once you have an incumbent in a race and the incumbent is on the ballot, I can’t believe that the incumbent does not become the front-runner.
I think James Johnson had a very strong performance—obviously he did a lot of work in the community and in getting his message out—but, I think it is going to become more difficult for him to fundraise as a result of [Tonia Reyes-Uranga] now being on the ballot as the incumbent.
It is going to be a good race in June and a very interesting one. And, since it will be all we have going on locally for the June ballot, there are going to be a lot of eyes on it.
But, I really think just by getting her name on the ballot, as an incumbent, [Tonia Reyes-Uranga] becomes the front-runner in that race.