In a surprising turn of events, after a City Council campaign that lasted over six months in which 10 of our residents sought two open seats, the results were actually known on election night. Current residents Mary Nakae Wells, a member of the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education, and longtime resident Craig Corman, a member of the Cultural Heritage Commission who served eight years on the Planning Commission, were elected by wide margins.

Although I had some sense of who would do well, I fully expected that it would be days if not weeks before we would see conclusive results.

We were very fortunate to have a number of outstanding candidates who were well qualified to serve on the City Council. Most of the ten ran very sophisticated, intense campaigns.

What explains the results and what can we learn from the fact that the final results were not nearly as close as I among others expected?

Do the results reflect an appetite among the voters for change? Not at all.

Two incumbents who had been part of a leadership alliance for a number of years decided not to run for re-election. Thus, change is inevitable no matter who is elected. So notions of “throw the rascals out” were not at play. We can anticipate that the change would be substantial no matter which of several of the candidates were elected.

Are the results reflective of the role of money expenditures? Although former

Speaker of the California Assembly

Jesse Unruh is supposed to have said that “money is the mother’s milk of politics”, all of the candidates were funded well enough, to a large extent self-funded, to get their messages out.

Unlike in 2020, no substantial Political

Action Committee funds were expended on behalf of any candidate. There was no repeat of the 2020 experience when commercial interests spent six figure $ on behalf of two candidates. I am hopeful that this absence of Political Action

Committee funding support will remain the case going forward.

Did support for or opposition to the Cheval Blanc Hotel project have an impact? Most members of the City government supported the project, but in a low turnout referendum, our residents rejected it. A very vocal few tried to make this a campaign issue and deny support to anyone who had favored the project.

This strategy flopped in this election as it has whenever substantial union support was not in play.. Most of the candidates had supported the Cheval Blanc project.

Only one candidate, Sharon Persovski, campaigned based on her opposition, which did not translate into many votes.

Not many residents appear to support the mindless “no” on anything in excess of 45’.

Did concerns about personal security and criminal activity play a substantial role? Not really. Most if not all of the candidates gave prominent mention to the need for more robust law enforcement generally and visible law enforcement around the future subway stops including a BHPD substation at the Wilshire/La

Cienega station. There was no daylight between the four leading candidates,

Corman, Wells, Alissa Roston or

Myra Demeter on this issue apart from

Corman’s advocacy of a city prosecutor who would take over prosecutorial responsibility for crimes committed within the city that the County District Attorney would not prosecute.

Was experience in City government a distinguishing characteristic? Not particularly. Most of the candidates had completed Team Beverly Hills and some had completed the Citizens Police Academy.

Between them they had served for dozens of years on City Commissions (Corman on Planning and Cultural Heritage; Demeter on Health & Safety and Planning; Roston on two Commissions; and Demeter, Roston and Nooshin Meshkaty all served two terms on the Board of Education). And the fact that, if elected, Wells would leave her term as a member of the

Board of Education several months prior to completion was not to her significant detriment.

Negative campaigning is troublesome because even where not factually based sometimes it works. I am told that there were some in this election and fully understand that the targets of false accusations take great offense. It is not my view that whatever occurred had a material impact on the results.

So, what happened?

In short, Corman has been a lifelong City resident who has been well respected by all who have known him throughout the years. He was able to present himself as experienced and knowledgeable about City affairs and capable of applying good judgment to deal with the issues confronting the city however and whenever they would arise.

Wells is very well known to the residents who are deeply involved and invested in BHUSD. She has played a leadership role in dealing with the many challenges of the pandemic and the construction issues facing the District. She is perceived as someone who has successfully navigated “choppy seas” with a firm hand on the tiller.

Roston and Demeter appeared to most voters as very similar – both were longtime residents of the southwest part of the city; both were City Commissioners; both sent several children through the

Beverly HIlls schools and both served two terms as members of the BHUSD Board of Education. In both cases, their service on the board was at least a decade ago so they did not command the same high and generally positive profile with current parents of school district children as Wells enjoyed. While Demeter had recently held the high profile position as Chair of the Planning Commission, Roston had been President of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. Their substantive views were similar and they are good friends..

It is reasonable to assume that they took votes from each other and interesting to speculate about what would have resulted if only one of them had been running.

Russell Stuart, now a close fifth, is really a newcomer to the City political scene. He has not had much involvement up to now with the City government but was able to leverage his position as the only candidate who was a registered Republican and endorsements from Republican organizations into a very respectable showing. If Mr. Stuart decides to seek office in the future, we may learn whether the Republican support is a floor or a ceiling.

I must emphasize that I respect and admire the campaigns of several of the other candidates and do not mean to denigrate the extraordinary efforts of any of them. They campaigned well and successfully.

Craig and Mary simply did it better.

Peter Ostroff is a retired attorney and former Beverly Hills Planning Commissioner.