Civically Speaking is a weekly newsletter on the latest local government news from the lens of the Long Beach Post’s City Hall reporter, who sits through so many city meetings for us. Subscribe here.


Where are all the voters?

I’m going to start this week’s newsletter by listing a few names you might not know but you’ll understand why when I finally get to my point. Sometimes that takes a while. 

James “DJ” Hamburger, Lloyd “Bobcat” Masson and Ester “Bester” Lim are all real people who were on the ballot this week, and all of them received more votes than any person who is currently leading the four Long Beach City Council races. 

President R Boddie (4,205 votes) narrowly missed the cut, but he would be giving Councilmember Daryl Supernaw a run for his money if he had run for Long Beach’s 4th City Council District instead of President of the United States. 

Dream big but but start small, Mr. Boddie. 

I’ve written about how voter turnout was expected to be historically bad in this primary election because the competition for the Democratic (Biden) and Republican (Trump) nomination has been considered a formality since probably the first week of January 2021. 

And that has come to fruition here in Long Beach. As I’m writing this Thursday afternoon, most of the ballots have been processed by the county and just over 17% of the city’s registered voters appear to have participated. (That number will go up as ballots continue to be counted.)

The results are that two incumbents (Cindy Allen and Suely Saro) are projected to win another term with just about 4,300 votes cast for the two candidates combined. Another seat in the city’s 8th District could be won by a candidate with fewer than 2,000 votes.

I wrote about this likely being the case a few weeks ago, but it appears that didn’t inspire that many people to vote. 

Where does the turnout fall in terms of Long Beach history? You’d be surprised that it’s not the worst showing, not by a long shot. 

You see, cities like Long Beach and others that had dramatically bad turnout in past years were forced by law to align with the state’s election cycle to boost voter participation, and for the first two primaries under that format, it worked. Long Beach saw 40.1% turnout in 2020 and 29.4% turnout in 2022. 

While the 17% turnout seen so far this year is the worst since the new system was put in place, it’s still higher than 2018 (15.8%) or even 2016 (13.5%).

Allen and Saro’s presumed victories coupled with whoever wins the 8th District seat will see the City Council’s supermajority of women grow to seven of the nine seats. It could also further solidify Mayor Rex Richardson’s block of allies. 

Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, who is currently leading the race in the 8th District by about 250 votes, served on Richardson’s campaign and worked on his transition team. 

The district had been represented by Councilmember Al Austin for the past 12 years who had intermittently feuded with Richardson in private and in public with Austin most recently trying to block Richardson from creating new “deputy mayor” positions

While Supernaw could pull out a primary victory and avoid a runoff, he’d need to over-perform the roughly 50% clip he’s held steady at since the initial releases Tuesday night. Is it possible? Sure. Is it probable? There’s a saying about not trusting a journalist’s math for a reason. 

The other close race in the city still to be decided is the hotel worker minimum wage increase. One interesting observation, which I just spun around in my chair to announce to my editor, was that the low voter turnout could actually upend what would’ve been a slam dunk had it been on the November ballot. 

Low voter turnout leads to situations where older, more conservative voters have an outsized voice in deciding things, and that’s something we’ve seen in this election. 

The city of Anaheim, whose elected leaders opposed a similar increase, held a special election to decide the issue in 2023. It failed and turnout was 20.8%.

Long Beach’s Measure RW currently holds a narrow lead with 50.6% support and potentially weeks of updates to come.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS WEEK:

It’s been nearly five years since Fire Station 9 in Los Cerritos was permanently closed, but this Tuesday the City Council could finally vote to approve a construction contract for its replacement. It could cost as much as $19.4 million to build the new firehouse, but it would return the station’s assets closer to its intended service area, something residents have pushed for. The total price of purchasing the land and rebuilding the station is over $30 million, and the city is expected to issue bonds to help finance the project. The old station has been declared partially historic and a Westside bakery is negotiating with the city to convert the old station into a production site for its popular Filipino treats.

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT WEEK:

I’m not saying this is important just because the word “poo” was thrown around. This week, the Civil Service Commission formally voted to oppose the proposed charter amendment that city officials have said is necessary to speed up the city’s hiring processes and reduce a 22% vacancy rate for city jobs. However, commissioners and some labor groups have pushed back on the idea saying it could give the city manager too much autonomy and erode the protections the Civil Service Department is meant to provide. The proposal includes new hiring preferences that could give local graduates, residents, part-time employees and interns a leg up in the future. This week, a commissioner compared the proposal to a nice steak dinner with those preferences being the steak and the weakening of Civil Service protections being “a scoop of poo.”

Jason Ruiz covers City Hall and politics for the Long Beach Post. Reach him at [email protected] or @JasonRuiz_LB on Twitter.