Dear Voter Regarding Santa Monica City Council Election: Anybody but the SMRR Slate

Dear Santa Monica Voters,

We are heading into the election season here in Santa Monica and our choices are becoming clear. If you ask any resident what their main concern is, they will respond that it's the crime, safety, and disorder perpetuated by the transient addicts and mentally ill who are using our city as either a toilet, or a pool to hunt victims. In the course of the past month we've seen stabbings, attempted rapes, attempted murders, and the horrific kidnapping of a toddler by a transient. Then there was the Homeless Man Charged After Holding Knife To Boy's Throat on Pier.

Whether fully deserved or not, this is our brand now: a city overrun by addicts and dangerously mentally ill people, who, in full drug psychosis or trenchant criminality, regularly attack residents and tourists. The result is our beaches are full, but downtown is empty at the height of summer as tourists decamp for safer destinations.

But you wouldn't know the city was in crisis from the SMRR slate's platform of radical dead-ender candidates Barry Snell, Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, and Natalya Zernitskaya, who embody SMRR's anti-enforcement values. You can judge the SMRR Four by who is endorsing them-The "defund the police" Santa Monica Democratic Club, plus sitting SMRR council members Gleam Davis, Jesse Zwick, and Caroline Torosis. The SMDC started early to consolidate the "progressive values" around this clueless five point platform:

Housing

Mobility

Worker's rights

Tenants rights

LGBTQ

This platform reads like a satire of Santa Monica, with no mention of public safety at all. But I'm not surprised, all of the SMRR Four have endorsed failing DA George Gascon, who will soon be ousted to pursue his real dream of being a public defender. Recently, council member Torosis, a SMRR plant herself, said that to tackle the public safety crisis, Santa Monica needs "to build more housing, more supportive housing, and more affordable housing." This bit of braindead sophistry is spouted as the city is being force-fed 9,000 new units of ugly, monolithic housing in an unprecedented building frenzy making developers rich. Not to mention that Torosis's cynical beliefs will have zero effect on the transient addicts and criminals, who at a rate of 6,000 a year, drift in and out of SM after inflicting an average 3 months of mayhem. Should we build 6,000 new units a year for these fine citizens, Caroline?

It's almost as if the SMRR Four, endorsed by their SMRR council handlers Torosis, Zwick and Davis, are living in an alternate reality, in which the above attacks and daily depravations don't exist-so now we can work on issues like mobility! Or whatever LGBTQ means in the most progressive city in the country's most progressive state. Do you trust the SMRR Four will support any enforcement measures or budget increases for our underfunded police department (by millions of dollars each year compared to like nearby cities)? I don't.

This is why, as the entire country pulls back from the excesses of underfunding the police and the decarceration movement, we need to continue the direction of the Change Slate that is up for reelection (Brock, Parra, de la Torre) and reelect them. And we must fill the 4th open seat, vacated by Gleam Davis, with somebody equally in touch with the common sense concerns of residents and businesses alike. As candidates declare, I'm waiting to see who among them seem to have a clue for that fourth seat. I will vote for anybody but SMRR establishment candidates Snell, Hall, Raskin, Zernitskaya. Unless you like the empty storefronts and daily chaos on our streets.

In a couple of weeks, be prepared for all sorts of mailers from SMRR screaming the tired old lies that all their opponents want to kill rent control, (impossible because it's in our charter). Don't fall for it. Let's shake things up until we get a council super-majority that's fully in touch with reality about the need for more police to prevent crime, as cogently put forth by this piece by Marc Verville, Chair of the City's Audit Subcommittee. Any candidate not placing more police as their first priority should be dismissed as lacking common sense. We must turn the city around in time for the 2028 Olympics, and this election cycle will be key as an opportunity to restore our brand. Stop the failed social experiments and get serious. Vote!