When winning is the only thing, anything goes.

Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) has dominated what passes for politics in Santa Monica for three decades, It now virtually owns a majority of seats on the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education, the Rent Control Board and the City Council.

It was founded by residents to protect and serve the 70 percent of residents who were tenants and, for a while, it did, but today its primary interest is preserving its own power.

Several years ago, I asked one of the founders, who had severed his SMRR ties years before, what had happened to it.

He said, “They have become Stalinists.”

The SMRR puppet masters’ relationship with City Hall is downright incestuous, and the Chamber of Commerce has finally realized what many of us have known for years — that SMRR was its chief ally, not its adversary.

For some years, SMRR has held the patent on winning campaigns – take credit for all the good stuff, blame the bad stuff on your opponents, run a lot of pretty pictures in your mailers, and portray yourself as the underdog.

But a curious thing happened on the way to the fall election. Residents got angry. The City’s relentless promotion and aggressive economic development policies. chronic traffic congestion, a daily transient population estimated at 300,000, the City’s reduction of public review of proposed projects and its increasing use of development agreements, the tree wars and other municipal insults led to the residents’ roil.

All of that discontent was made manifest in the Residents’ Initiative to Fight Traffic (RIFT), which was written by the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC), which surfaced a couple of years ago.

Founded by a small group of residents, some of whom were members of SMRR, SMCLC got SMRR leaders’ attention right away. Its founding members were smart, savvy and organized, and they were the first progressives to ever challenge SMRR’s hegemony.

RIFT would cap commercial development at 75,000 square feet for 15 years. Over 10,000 residents signed the petitions to qualify the measure for the ballot.

The SMRR/City Hall/Chamber axis opposed RIFT on sight, as it not only limited commercial growth, it limited their power.

SMRR pulled every trick in the big book of hardball politics to defeat EIFT and win all the other contests. .

For the first time in its history, it did not run a full slate of candidates for the four open seats, in order to give its incumbents – Richard Bloom and Ken Genser a clear shot at re-election. It front-loaded the School Board election. It packed the Santa Monica Democratic Club in order to override the recommendations of its steering committee that it endorse Genser and incumbent Bobby Shriver, and reject Bloom on the basis of his pro-development record. Swamped by SMRR votes, the club endorsed Genser and Bloom, but not Shriver. Following the vote, club president Julie Lopez Dad, a longtime SMRR member, described it as “ludicrous.”

A new group, “Save Our City” (SOC), that was created to defeat RIFT, claimed to be “the broadest coalition” ever assembled in Santa Monica, but in fact, it was the same old crowd – special interests and the self-anointed “elite,” following SMRR’s lead.

Armed with $800,000 from developers, led by SMRR stalwarts Judy Abdo and Bruce Cameron, along with Terry O’Day, it twisted arms, made threats, and bombarded voters with mailers that were meant to scare them into line. According to SMRR’s SOC, Prop T was “fiscally irresponsible..,would hurt our schools…will hurt renters …is too risky…risks our children’s future…” and so on. There was no basis in fact for any of those and other charges, of course. It was an $800.000 dirty trick played on Santa Monica residents by the people who had sworn to serve them. And it worked. Prop T was
defeated. And all of SMRR’s candidates won – except one Rent Control Board candidate, who got scant support from SMRR.

All the Council incumbents – Bloom, Genser, Herb Katz and Shriver — won re-election, with Shriver running well ahead of the field, as he had four years ago.

The only remaining question was who would succeed Katz as mayor.

Some people thought it should be Shriver, as he had won the popular vote by an impressive margin. But what “should be” seldom figures in Council proceedings.

Besides, in addition to besting his colleagues at the polls — twice, Shriver had supported Prop T, opposed the City’s own Prop SM, and endorsed Council candidate Ted Winterer, an SMCLC member – all of which were clearly approved by voters, but, as clearly, seen as heresy by his Council colleagues.

If not Shriver, people said, then Kevin McKeown. After all, he was
a SMRR member and the only Council member, besides Shriver, who has not had a turn in the mayor’s chair. But he, too, supported RIFT, and SMRR Council member Pam O’Connor has been quoted as saying that she would never vote for McKeown.

Who then?

Ken Gemser, of course.

When winning is the only thing, send in your star player.

Genser has been on the Council for 20 years. He’s been mayor twice before. He has a prodigious, if highly selective memory, and, once crossed, he never forgets and never forgives. His trademark hesitant manner notwithstanding, he’s tough, and he believes, with absolute certainty, that he knows what’s best for Santa Monica.

Countless residents may disagree, but they’re waiting in line for their two minutes at the podium, and Mr. Genser’s got the gavel.