Dear Editor,
We are writing to express our support for four outstanding community servants who are running for seats on the Santa Monica City Council: Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, and Natalya Zernitskaya. As Santa Monica homeowners since 2000, business owners, and parents of three children who have attended Santa Monica public schools since 2011, we feel deeply invested in the health, wellbeing, and future of our community.
Through our volunteer work in the community and political organizing sphere, we met and quickly grew to respect Barry, Ellis, Natalya, and Dan. We supported Natalya’s initial run for City Council in 2022, and when the four candidates decided to run as a slate in this year’s election, we supported them all. We knew that each one brought civic and lived experiences and education that would benefit our small city and region.
Ellis and Dan have served in as city commissioners in business and planning; Barry has served as a leader in our business community and as an elected member of the school board and the college board; and Natalya has served as the president of the League of Women Voters. All four of these excellent candidates have both professional and personal backgrounds that make them ideal for public service in our diverse, beautiful, and innovative community.
Barry is a certified public accountant and has raised several children and started a nonprofit service organization serving African Americans in Santa Monica. Ellis is a land use attorney and Santa Monica renter whose professional expertise is in the California Environmental Quality Act and other aspects of environmental and housing law. Dan is a graduate of West Point who served our country in battle during the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era of the military, and who has gone on to earn a business and public administration degrees, advocate for LGBTQ+ civil rights, and leader at a large local business.
Natalya came to the United States as a refugee from the former Soviet Union and grew up on public assistance before attending the University of California and becoming a financial analyst. Like Dan, she is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Three of the candidates are young millennial professionals who have already served Santa Monica as civic leaders, and one is an elected public servant and parent of adult children raised in Santa Monica. You could not ask for a more competent and compassionate slate of candidates to be the stewards of our beachside city and its $750 million annual budget.
Beyond competence, we support them because we know that each of them will do the homework for the demanding job that they are seeking because they are ethics and evidence-driven public servants. Together we have marched with them for workers’ rights in Santa Monica and elsewhere in Los Angeles. We have stood with them for LGBTQ+ people’s rights and for data-driven public health policy in our region. One of us (Susan) has interviewed many of the candidates who have run for local office in Los Angeles in the last several years, and found them to be among the most highly qualified who have stepped up to serve.
Our current City Council and the opposition slate of candidates seem to wave around the words “public safety” as if saying them alone will reduce poverty and homelessness and will clean up sidewalks and fix potholes. If only city administration and governance was this simple! It’s no more effective to say these words than it is to say “build the wall” to fix our country’s immigration issues.
The Los Angeles County Democratic Party and many pro-environment, pro-civil rights, and pro-working family organizations endorsed Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, and Natalya Zernitskaya. These candidates are the people who have already done hard work and are prepared to put in a lot more hard work, including the work of listening to their constituents, reading staff reports and scientific data, and conducting the people’s business with the seriousness and steadiness that Santa Monica residents, workers, and business owners deserve.
Please join us in voting for Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell and Natalya Zernitskaya for Santa Monica City Council.
Susan Sheu, Recording Secretary, Los Angeles County Democratic Party
Brian Colker, Co-owner and CFO, Linea Solutions, Inc and co-founder of the Grassroots Democrats HQ
