After Losing to Hayden : Shell Rejoins Rent Control Fray

When apartment owners met recently with officials in the new City of West Hollywood, a familiar figure from Santa Monica’s rent control wars was at their side.

David M. Shell’s appearance on behalf of the landlords was one of the first indications that the conservative Republican attorney was back on the job after waging an unsuccessful campaign against 44th District Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica).

Little had been heard from Shell since the November election, but the director of the Southern California Legal Foundation, an organization initially devoted to dismantling Santa Monica’s rent control, said he never intended to leave his post.

“I’m kind of attached to this place and there’s a lot of unfinished business,” said the 38-year-old Shell. “Plus, I enjoy public-interest law.

“Rent control is the bulk of our work, but we’re moving into other areas . . . we’re basically looking to limit the government’s power.”

Shell founded the nonprofit Southern California Legal Foundation in 1982. Winning a series of lawsuits against the Santa Monica Rent Control Board at the lower court level, the flamboyant attorney came to personify landlords’ bitter opposition to the city’s controversial law.

Parlaying that notoriety into a bid for the 44th District Assembly seat, Shell embarked on a well-funded campaign to defeat Hayden.

The race followed a fairly predictable course until Hayden revealed that Shell had been court martialed and sentenced to a year at hard labor in 1967 for injecting himself and another airman with a stimulant drug. Shell came back with a nasty attack of his own. Ultimately, however, Hayden won with about 56% of the vote.

Two months after the election, Shell still bristles at the mention of Hayden’s name. But the lanky attorney maintained that he has no serious regrets about the campaign.

“The only reason I ran was because it was against Hayden,” Shell said. “It had nothing to do with political aspirations. If I were going to run again it would be against Hayden.”

Shell said he has remained active within the Republican Party, serving on several committees at the county and statewide level, recruiting young members and speaking in public.

He said he is also more devoted to physical fitness. After developing a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit during the campaign, Shell said he has virtually quit smoking. He also participates in a weekly bowling league, plays basketball whenever possible and runs three to six miles a day.

Shell said that he received several job offers after the campaign, mostly from private law firms in Sacramento and San Diego, but never seriously considered leaving the legal foundation. In fact, he said he anticipates being busier than ever since several lower-court decisions against the Santa Monica Rent Control Board board have recently been overturned at the appellate court level.

In addition to working to reverse those appellate court decisions, Shell vowed that he would challenge the new rent control charter amendment approved by Santa Monica’s voters in November. The new law is supposed to strengthen rent control, but Shell contends that serious weaknesses remain.

Shell said the new law has attempted to give the Rent Control Board too much authority. “We’ll have to challenge whether they can do what they say they can do. Before, we challenged whether they were working within the charter.”

Attorneys who have worked with Shell say that he has an knack for uncovering weaknesses in the law. But Shell has always maintained that he opposes the Santa Monica Rent Control Board’s administration of the law, not the law itself.

“I think my strengths as an attorney come from being able to analyze a piece of legislation . . . that’s what I’ve always done,” Shell said. “The No. 1 thing I always look at is procedures. The substance of the rent control law has never been a concern of mine in these lawsuits.”

The board of directors recently raised Shell’s $50,000-a-year salary (he will not disclose the new figure.) and increased Shell’s budget by about 10%, allowing him to add an extra attorney to the staff, which now includes two lawyers, a clerk and a fund-raiser. It also provided him with enough money to rent the fashionable Wilshire Boulevard location in place of his old and cramped garage/office.