Brownley and Dolz Now Opponents in November

Julia Brownley, one of five Democratic candidates for nomination in the 41st Assembly District, won Tuesday’s primary. She will now run against Republican Tony Dolz to replace Fran Pavley (Agoura Hills-Dem.) who is termed-out in November. Brownley received 11,380 votes (34.9 percent) over Barry Groveman’s 8,734 votes (26.8 percent). The other Democratic candidates were Jonathan Levey, who received 6,587 votes (20.2 percent); Kelly Hayes-Raitt, 4,873 votes (14.9 percent); and Shawn Casey O’Brien, 1,057 votes (3.2 percent). Dolz won with 10,461 votes (75.6 percent) over Adriana Van Hemert’s 3,387 votes (24.4 percent). “It was a very exciting night,” Brownley told the Palisadian-Post yesterday morning from her home in Santa Monica. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook.” She spent most of Tuesday evening with friends and campaign volunteers at Back on Broadway, a restaurant near her home. She stayed there until about 65 percent of the votes had been counted, and then went to a friend’s house where a group of them followed the race results on a computer. “Fran [Pavley] was with me last night and I had lunch with Sheila [Kuehl] yesterday,” Brownley said of her two most prominent backers. “Zev [Yaroslavsky] came by last night and [Antonio] Villariagosa called me at a quarter to one in the morning, so that was exciting.” She went to bed around 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning and woke up at 7:30 a.m. While Brownley said she had “no earthly idea I would win” she “put forward the best campaign I could and worked it as hard as I could. I had a whole lot of volunteers working for me.” Brownley ran on an education platform, with the idea that “I want to be to education what Fran has been to the environment and what Sheila has been to health care.” She is president of the Santa Monica-Malibu School Board. She said Wednesday morning: “My campaign literature was positive and my message resonated. At the end of the day, I think [voters] did equate [my] 11-year commitment to education with a platform that said education was a priority.” Brownley, who has two children, spent part of Tuesday evening at an awards ceremony for her son, Fred, a senior at Santa Monica High School. Fred received an award for being “an extraordinary athlete and an extraordinary scholar,” Brownley said of her son, who will enter UC Berkeley in the fall. “That was a good omen,” she said. “He was a trailblazer for the evening. It was really a double win.” Asked how she plans to campaign against Dolz, Brownley said, “I haven’t thought about that yet but I can tell you that my campaign will be consistent. I can’t imagine changing it in any way, shape or form.”