A Birthday, a Wedding and an ‘Unbreakable Date’ Provoke Hostility and Suspicion in Council Election

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

Amaelstrom of mistrust and confusion is ensuring that Palisadians may not have the opportunity to question candidates seeking to represent them at City Hall on one platform.

Unless someone blinks first, it seems unlikely that the three candidates—incumbent Mike Bonin and his challengers Mark Ryavec and Robin Rudisill—will agree to share the stage and take questions from the public before the Los Angeles City Council election on March 7.

Heightening the tensions, which have once again been enflamed on social media, Bonin, of Mar Vista, and Ryavec, of Venice, have accused each other of a litany of misdeeds.

Ryavec suggested Bonin is in the pocket of real estate developers such as Rick Caruso.

Bonin has hit back, accusing Ryavec of spreading “disgusting lies” and characterizing the homeless as criminal predators.

This friction could allow Rudisill, a self-described “late-starter” who only this week hopes to raise her first $25,000 to qualify for public matching funds, to make up some ground. At the end of last month Bonin had raised $418,000 in contributions, Ryavec $32,000.

Without a full public debate, serious yet inspiring enough to overcome widespread political exhaustion, such sniping could depress turnout below the anemic 20 percent usual in city elections.

All candidates are Democrats, with Bonin endorsed by the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club, but they have starkly different views on critical issues.

Ryavec and Rudisill support Measure S, which imposes a two-year moratorium on some “mega-building” developments to protect neighborhoods, while Bonin opposes it, arguing it would curb the creation of low-cost housing.

Bonin supports Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness, which blends enforcement and a helping hand. Ryavec said he is focused on enforcement, clearing the streets and moving the homeless east, while Rudisill said she is more “humanitarian” and “calmer” than Ryavec.

The campaign for Bonin’s seat started unusually late, in a party benumbed by the results of the presidential election as well as rainstorms, which made it difficult to find a debate date, arousing frustration, mistrust and name-calling—much of it on social media.

Maryam Zar, familiar as Pacific Palisades Community Council chair but wearing her Westside Alliance of Regional Councils hat, originally proposed a debate to be held at the private Windward School in Mar Vista on Thursday, Feb. 27.

At first Rudisill said she would join Bonin on stage, but then realized, she told the Palisadian-Post on Monday, she had double-booked herself: She was hosting a post-wedding party for her daughter and 100 guests in Venice.

Ryavec never accepted the invitation.

“I will be with my remaining family members celebrating my 66th birthday in the Sierra Madre foothills in northern California,” he said firmly last week.

There were also suspicions, expressed on the hyper-local website Nextdoor, that Mar Vista was “home turf” for Bonin and challengers should find more neutral ground—although critics argued that all should be at ease anywhere in District 11 between the Palisades and Westchester.

Sarah Conner, president of Pacific Palisades Residents Association, found an alternative venue and date—the University Synagogue in Brentwood on Thursday, Feb. 16. She said she
“bent over backwards” to find a neutral moderator: it will be Michael Levine, the respected PR and writer.

But Bonin’s spokesman repeated that the “very busy” councilmember was already booked into an “unbreakable date” with constituents on that date.

Nextdoor lit up with posters claiming Bonin “might” appear at the Brentwood debate, implying otherwise he would be “running scared” and “chicken” if he did not appear in the “Sunset Corridor” where residents are upset about school expansions and traffic.

“That’s an ugly trap,” said one commentator.

There has also been “bad blood” between Bonin and PPRA leading light Barbara Kohn, who appears on Ryavec’s election material, which concerned Bonin supporters.

Rudisill said on Monday she may be able to escape family commitments to attend the Mar Vista debate, but Ryavec remained committed only to the Brentwood debate.

Relations between Bonin and Ryavec, already strained in clashes over who first suggested extra policing for the Palisades, have grown worse.

Ryavec has slammed Bonin for “listening to big developers rather than residents” and “receiving two-thirds of his contributions from outside our district, from Texas and Washington, D.C.”

On Monday, Feb. 13 Bonin angrily attacked Ryavec, saying his “malicious attacks are beyond the pale. Mr. Ryavec was easily the most frequent, nasty and malicious critic of Bill (Rosendahl, Bonin’s predecessor as CD11 councilmember), attacking him personally for his efforts to end homelessness.

“And now Mr. Ryavec is claiming that he and Bill were partners on homelessness issues. It is a sickening assault on Bill’s memory and I will not tolerate it. To defeat these lies … we are phoning and going door to door every day between now and March 7.”

Both Zar and Conner still believe Palisadians are owed the opportunity to judge the personalities and politics of all candidates side-by-side as part of a mature political process.

Optimists still hope that sometime over the next 20 days, cooler heads will prevail, real obstacles overcome, and a full and civilized debate will be organized—if only as an exemplar sorely lacking elsewhere in American politics.