CITY HALL — The City Clerk’s Office released the official list of candidates who have qualified for this November’s ballot on Thursday, setting the final lineups for contests to decide the makeup of the Santa Monica City Council and school board.
All five sitting council members are defending their seats in November, as are three out of the four incumbent school board members whose terms are up. School board member Kelly Pye has decided not to seek re-election.
Both the Rent Control Board and the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees elections will be uncontested. The four incumbents in each race are the only candidates who qualified for the ballot.
Ten candidates are running for three available four-year terms on the council, with frequent challengers Jon Mann, Jerry Rubin and Linda Armstrong among them.
Rubin, who has waged four unsuccessful campaigns for the council beginning in 2000, said he’s taking the 2010 race seriously, though he stopped short of saying he’s in it to win it.
“I don’t think that’s the most important thing for me. In fact, the city’s going to do just fine without Jerry Rubin necessarily being on the City Council,” he said.
With “Tan, Rested and Ready” as his campaign slogan and promises to promote “community unity” and seek “win-win solutions” as his platform, Rubin is presenting himself as a consensus builder and a diehard Santa Monica booster.
“I’ve seen divisiveness, and sometimes it really hurts,” he said.
Incumbent Bob Holbrook, who has won five terms on the council without the backing of powerful political party Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights — the only currently serving local politician to pull off such a feat — said this fall promises to be a competitive campaign season.
“It won’t be easy ... there are serious challengers out there,” he said.
In addition to Holbrook, four-term incumbent Pam O’Connor and three-term incumbent Kevin McKeown are also running for re-election.
Chief among those gunning to unseat an incumbent is Ted Winterer, who received more than 12,000 votes in the 2008 council election, coming in fifth in a contest for four seats.
After failing to win SMRR’s endorsement two years ago, Winterer, who sits on the Planning Commission, was the highest vote-getter on his way to wining SMRR’s endorsement at the party’s convention two weeks ago.
Also running in the four-year race are: Daniel Cody, a strategic alliance professional; Terence Later, an entertainment consultant; and Jean McNeil Wyner, a community liaison with Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center.
The race for two available two-year council terms has five qualified candidates, including Gleam Davis and Terry O’Day, who were appointed to the council following the deaths of mayors Herb Katz and Ken Genser, respectively.
The three challengers are: Robert Kronovet, a Republican who in 2008 turned heads by winning a term on Rent Control Board without SMRR’s endorsement; Susan Hartley, a co-founder of Santa Monica Treesavers and a longtime activist; and David Ganezer, publisher of local newspaper The Santa Monica Observer.
In the school board race, eight candidates are vying for four open seats.
Incumbents Oscar de la Torre, Barry Snell and Ralph Mechur are seeking re-election and, along with challenger Laurie Lieberman, have received SMRR’s backing.
The other four candidates are: Patrick Cady, a retired teacher and coach from Malibu; Jake Wachtel, a TV producer; Chris Bley, a teacher who made a strong showing in 2008; and Nimish Patel, a small business owner who serves on the school district’s Financial Oversight Committee.
