Long Beach Mayor’s Race Increasingly Contentious

Long Beach voters replacing their longtime mayor June 6 will choose between real estate broker and two-term Councilman Frank Colonna and former Southern California Edison Co. President Bob Foster.

Each candidate has promised a brighter future for the city of 490,000, but each has campaigned on his opponent’s past.

Long Beach is among seven cities and 10 school districts across Los Angeles County holding elections the same day as the statewide primary. They include Artesia, where voters will decide whether to ban fireworks, and El Monte, where a proposed public safety parcel tax is on the ballot.

Voters in the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District are expected to choose Monica Garcia to replace her former boss, Jose Huizar, who left the school board upon his election to the Los Angeles City Council late last year. Her runoff opponent, Christopher Arellano, withdrew from the race after admitting he had lied about completing graduate degrees, although his name remains on the ballot.

Nine other school districts are asking voters to approve bond measures to expand or update campus facilities. Local school bond measures require 55% voter approval for passage.

In Long Beach, voters will receive two ballots: one for the three City Council races and a school board contest, and another for the California contests and measures. Incumbent school board member Jim Choura faces a challenge from teacher David Barton.

Eleven candidates are vying in a special election for the 2nd District council seat vacated by Dan Baker’s resignation in February over a land deal with the police union president.

There are runoffs for two other council seats. In the District 3 race to replace Colonna, telecommunications business owner Gary DeLong will face attorney Audrey Stephanie Loftin. In the 5th District, teachers union lawyer Gerrie Schipske is challenging Councilwoman Jackie Kell. Kell, prohibited by term limits from appearing on the April 11 primary ballot, ran as a write-in candidate, beating Schipske, her closest competitor, by just six votes but failing to garner the majority required to avoid a runoff.

Four years ago, Mayor Beverly O’Neill won reelection in a write-in campaign, but she has decided to retire after three terms in the city’s top elected post.

Foster, 59, handily dominated Colonna, 62, by 48% to 28% in the five-man primary race to replace O’Neill. Foster also vastly outspent the two-term councilman, according to city campaign finance records.

A former Sacramento energy consultant and lobbyist who joined Edison in 1984 and retired last year to run for mayor, Foster has the endorsement of the police and fire unions and the Greater Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

Colonna has been endorsed by O’Neill and former Gov. George Deukmejian, a Long Beach resident since his storefront lawyer days in Belmont Shore. The candidate grew up in Long Beach and worked as a city environmental officer before going into real estate. He lives in a beachfront home several houses down from O’Neill.

Foster installed carpet and linoleum to put himself through college and to buy extras as he started as a legislative aide in the capital. He moved to Long Beach nine years ago just across Alamitos Bay from Colonna, to the Naples neighborhood lined with canals and moored boats.

The two rivals hold many common views. Both have denounced the liquefied natural gas plant proposed for the Port of Long Beach, called for expanding the Police Department and extending library hours, and talked about cleaning up pollution generated by the city’s bustling port.

Yet the race has been increasingly contentious.

Colonna accuses Foster of being a Sacramento energy lobbyist who helped mastermind deregulation that led to market manipulation and exorbitant utility bills in 2000-01.

Foster says Colonna has not gotten enough done in his eight years on the council to ease pollution and the city’s widening divide “among haves and have-nots.” And he criticizes the councilman’s backing of a 2002 pension raise that fed a city deficit.