2017 Campaign Season for City Elections Kicks Off

Displaying a widely varying spectrum of political knowledge, experience and opinions, candidates for offices of both the Pasadena City Council and Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education met Tuesday evening for the campaign season’s first candidate forum, sponsored by Pasadena based political action organization ACT, at Pasadena City College’s Creveling Lounge.

Pasadena’s upcoming primary municipal election will take place on March 7, 2017. Voters will select to fill the seats for Pasadena City Council Districts 3, 5 and 7, as well Pasadena Board of Education Districts 1, 3, 5 and 7.

City Council District 5 incumbent Victor Gordo faced two opponents— education activist Aida Morales and writer Krystal Lopez Padley — while District 7 incumbent Andy Wilson, who is finishing the last two years of an appointed term, faced three of his four challengers – attorney Phil Hosp, Amtrak employee Bryan Witt, and PR consultant Sheena Tahilramani.

Incumbent John Kennedy, who is running unopposed for his District 3 seat, is currently traveling, and was not at the event.

Four PUSD incumbents and three challengers also appeared, vying for seats in three School Board districts. District 1 incumbent and board president Kimberly Kenne faced former attorney Rita Miller, while District 3 incumbent Adrienne Ann Mullen faced PUSD classified employee Michelle Richardson-Bailey. Former Board President and District 5 incumbent, Elizabeth Pomeroy faced Muir High School teacher Matthew Baron.

Scott Phelps, the incumbent in District 7, is running unopposed.

The School District forum was first up for the evening as moderator John Buchanan queried the candidates about the ongoing controversy at Madison Elementary School, where the appointment and administration of Principal Juan Ruelas has resulted simmering tension with some teachers and parents for over a year.

“We have wrestled with this for a while,” said Kenne, “but I think we should be focusing on progress, not personality. How is this affecting students? What is the impact on them? I want to to keep an eye on that school, but I also want to hear from the parents.”

Candidate Miller called the problem one of “transparency.”

“More information is needed,” she said. “Is it just parents who are complaining?”

“We need to be looking at the stress on students,” said Mullen, echoing Kenne’s sentiments. “We need to be addressing achievement gaps. The appointment was not our decision to make,” and she added, “We support the staff at Madison.”

Muir agriculture teacher Baron disagreed with Mullen, saying, “As Board Members, staffing is, in fact, our ultimate decision.”

Richardson Bailey also said, “the priority should be on the classroom,” but added, “This problem should not have been allowed to fester as long as it has.”

Pomeroy, a longtime classroom teacher, said she has “listened to everyone” regarding the issue and recommended voters and parents visiting the school with her, as well as “gathering data to really find out what is happening there.” Pomeroy also said, “We should be celebrating our successes there.”

The candidates faced another controversial question rife with implications: they were asked if they would support the right of all PUSD parents, legal or undocumented, to vote in Pasadena Unified elections.

“Yes,” said Mullen, who said she had been a part of a similar scenario when working in Tacoma Park, Maryland, one of the first U.S. cities to enact such a law in the early 1990s. Richardson Bailey also agreed with the idea, adding that the law has been successful in San Francisco and Chicago. Richardson Bailey emphasized, however, that parents “need to have an understanding of voting rights, and be given clear guidelines.”

Pomeroy also agreed, saying “Every parent is welcome,” while Kenne also agreed, but noted that such a law might involve changing the City’s charter. Candidates Miller and Baron also agreed with the idea.

The candidates also faced questions regarding the use of restricted funds to support schools assist low income students and students of color, their suggestions on closing the “achievement gap” between white students and minority students, and how to increase enrollment numbers in the District.

Following a similar theme, the City Council candidates, after their initial introductions, were asked whether they supported creating a local ordinance prohibiting local police from assisting Federal immigration agencies with investigating or taking action against undocumented residents in Pasadena.

Gordo said he would support such a law, detailing his own upbringing in Pasadena, and recalling how he arrived from Zacatecas, Mexico, at five years old, and how he remembers realizing at that young age the constant possibility that his parents could be deported at any time.

“Leave immigrants alone,” said Lopez Padley, who said that if elected, she would work towards creating official “Sanctuary City” status for the city, and said she would “go further” than that, but did not offer specific details.

Morales also agreed, saying that she would not support actions against illegals.

“We have an obligation to protect our children here in this city,” she added.

For his part, Hosp said he agreed with Gordo that enforcing immigration law is not the top priority of local police, but said that he would not support such an ordinance.

“I’m also not going to hamper the ability of the police to solve crimes,” he explained. “Such a law would prevent the police from doing their jobs.”

Hosp also stated that the “recent gang-related activities” in Pasadena “involved some immigration issues,” though he later backed away from that statement following the forum.

Candidate Tahilramani, who once worked in the George W. Bush administration and later worked for political strategist Karl Rove, agreed with Hosp, and said “I would not support such an ordinance, but I do realize that my job on the City Council is not for me to represent myself, but to represent everybody out there… I will not let my personal beliefs get in the way as your representative, but I personally would not support such an ordinance.”

Councilmember Wilson said that “diversity is a compelling part of what makes our city great, and part of that diversity is having a safe, comfortable immigrant community that feels like our police force is not tracking them down. Our city already has a policy statement that says our police force is not part of immigration enforcement. I would not support enlisting them any further in that function.”

Bryan Witt also agreed with such an ordinance saying that “our officers already have enough to do, and I really like the idea of Pasadena being a sanctuary city. I will direct our officers not to inquire about detainees’ immigration status if I have anything to say about it. Witt also lamented what he called the “ugly rhetoric” of the presidential campaign and “in both houses of Congress.”

Said Witt, clearly the most vocally liberal of the candidates, “We need to send a message to Washington and to the County that Pasadena will have nothing to do with the deportation of 11 million of our friends and neighbors.”

Thus were the candidates apparently split along mostly partisan lines, though the offices are non-partisan.

All of the candidates said they supported tenants’ rights in principle, on one hand, but were divided on the issue of creating some type of police oversight.

Witt, Morales and Lopez Padley were in favor of civilian oversight of police in principle, though both Witt and Lopez Padley recognized the difficulty in having professional academic experts analyze the work of officers “in a gunfight,” as Witt described.

The candidates were also questioned by moderator Buchanan on increasing local housing stock by legalizing “Granny Flats,” controlling gentrification, and ideas for increasing City revenue and closing the City’s projected budget gaps.

The city-wide election primary will be held on March 7.

Joining ACT and the PCC Faculty Association as co-sponsors were the Pasadena Chapters of the ACLU and NAACP, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE),Coalition for Increased Civilian Oversight of Pasadena Police (CICOPP), Greater Pasadena Affordable Housing Group (GPAHG), Community Council for Equality and Justice at Madison School (CCEJM), Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance (IMA), National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), Pasadenans Organizing for Progress (POP), Pasadena Tenants Union (PTU), Pasadena Latino Forum (PLF), and Pasadenans Empowering Parent Participation in Educational Governance (PEPPEG).

 

[Editor’s Note: In the original version of this story, Pasadena Now inadvertently misspelled the name of City Council candidate Krystal Lopez Padley. We apologize for this error, which has been corrected.]