Hometown Mayor : Cautious Kell Neither Blunders Nor Dazzles in 17 Months in Office

Of the hundreds of times Ernie Kell could have resorted to a veto since becoming Long Beach’s first full-time mayor last year, there has been only one matter that nudged the threat of a veto from the ruddy-faced millionaire--crumbling sidewalks.

Kell said he would have vetoed this year’s budget if the City Council had not agreed to a slightly altered version of his proposal to add $800,000 for sidewalk repairs and street trees, along with another $200,000 for anti-gang and drug programs.

That buckling sidewalks, of all the city’s problems, should stir Kell’s political passions says much about the former city councilman’s style as the city’s first full-time, elected mayor.

In the 17 months since he was swept into office with a 60% majority, Kell has remained true to his cautious instincts, taking care not to rock the political boat or move too far out front on controversial matters. He has neither blundered nor dazzled, offering few surprises.

Those who fault Kell’s performance do so not for what he has done, but for what he has not done. He has been, critics contend, too much the small-town mayor for a city that is laboring to shed its parochial image and become a major urban player on the Pacific Rim.

Kell has lobbied the council on only a handful of issues and assumed a hands-off role that has made him less a force on the council than when he was a member of it, representing the 5th District. Yet when he has seriously pushed for something, he has won.

His ties have remained strong to the white middle-class east-enders who form the core of his political base, while in the minds of many minority leaders, Kell has dealt only superficially with some of the most critical problems facing their community.

He has maintained his reputation as a pragmatist who appeases by forming task forces on difficult issues, and who frequently molds proposals out of other people’s ideas.

His closest political confidants continue to be his wife of 17 years, Jackie, and his paid political consultant, Jeff Adler. In this pre-election year, he is raising money with ease for next year’s campaign against Councilman Tom Clark, retaining the generous financial support of developers, who not only consider him a winner, but a known and relatively safe quantity.

“Given the way the mayor sees the role of the mayor, he has done very well,” said Chuck Greenberg, an attorney who backed one of Kell’s opponents in last year’s election. “He has minimized conflict. He has pulled together a consensus of the council and has avoided a lot of strife and difficulty.

“But for those who envisioned the role of the mayor being a citywide leader who puts together an agenda for the city and carries it out, I think he has been less successful at that.”

“He has a careful way about him that has not held him in good stead in this position,” said one council member. “Whatever’s safe, let’s do it.”

Complained a local business leader, “We envisioned someone who could promote the city overseas and in Sacramento. What we got with Ernie, unfortunately, is a 5th District councilman.”

Yet the council has been relatively peaceful under Kell’s tenure, usually lining up behind city management and passing a number of significant measures.

With Kell’s blessings, the council has approved a major revision of land-use policy that lowered density limits in many of the city’s residential neighborhoods, a billion-dollar shoreline development on the old Pike amusement park site, and an office of historic preservation that has institutionalized preservation efforts in an unprecedented manner for Long Beach.

A proposed citizen’s review board to handle police brutality complaints has been put on next April’s ballot for a public vote, and an ordinance was passed barring discrimination against people with AIDS.

“The measure of his skill is that there have been so very few crises,” said Anthony Tortorice, a Kell appointee to the Planning Commission.

“I think he gets high marks for wanting to learn about issues that face the city. He has grown in the job,” commented Doug Otto, an attorney and preservationist who said Kell has become more sensitive to preservation issues.

Still, there is no consensus that Kell’s new $67,500-a-year position, and his handling of it, have left much of a footprint on city affairs. “I don’t see much difference except higher overhead,” said Jim Gray, chief executive officer of Harbor Bank and a former harbor commissioner.

“There’s a lot going on, but it’s just sort of happening,” remarked a council member.

The dissatisfied argue that Kell’s vision of his job and his social polish are both sadly limited, particularly in a position that requires more style than substance. The mayor’s job has little real power. Kell can exercise a veto that can be overridden by a simple majority of the council, and he makes appointments to city boards and commissions. Otherwise, it is a matter of finesse.

Kell’s trips to Washington and Sacramento are infrequent. He has neither his own legislative analyst nor budget analyst on staff. He has stayed clear of the city’s attempts to woo the Disney Co., which is trying to figure out where in Southern California it wants to put a massive amusement complex that will prove a golden egg for whichever city it is dropped in.

Kell’s lack of speaking skills are legend. Even Kell jokes about them: “Yolanda in my district office is helping me with my Spanish and my wife Jackie is helping me with my English.”

Interviewed on national television early this year after a Long Beach policeman was filmed shoving a black man into a plate glass window during an arrest, Kell called the woman who interviewed him, “sir.”

At a gathering at the Breakers Hotel, Kell recounted for the crowd how the top of the hotel had been used as a lookout for Japanese submarines during World War II. Listening were the new owners of the hotel, which included some Japanese businessmen. “People just sort of rolled their eyes,” recalled a member of the audience. Summoning Lindsay Shields, the former director of the Public Corporation for the Arts, to the council podium at one meeting, Kell addressed the unmarried woman as “Mrs. Lindsay.”

Kell’s style is unabashedly down home. Photos from his North Dakota boyhood sit on his office shelves and cornstalks grow in his back yard. His 85-year-old mother lives with him and his wife. He tells office visitors about the pigeon family that nests on his City Hall window ledge. Although a millionaire who made his money with commercial developments, there is little beyond Kell’s custom-tailored suits and $140,000 private airplane that would suggest his wealth.

“I think one of Ernie’s charms is that he gives the appearance of being really hometown,” said Gray, whose wife, a North Dakota native, gets a North Dakota calendar from Kell every year. “And even though he’s from North Dakota, a lot of people like that. They’re not looking for Mr. Slick.”

Indeed, a businessman in the tourist industry said that Kell “doesn’t come across as charismatic or dynamic. But he’s a good guy, honest and sincere and accessible . . . I think he’s been very good for us and very supportive.”

Kell, 61, prefers to do his risk-taking out of office. He flies a four-seat, single-engine plane and used to race off road and ski. But when it comes to politics, he likes to say, “When a governmental leader tries to jump on top of the soapbox and say, ‘Follow me,’ and jumps off and keeps going and he looks around, generally there’s nobody behind him.

“You have to have other people bring the consensus to you.”

He has lobbied sparingly because “no one likes to be pressured. I save that until I feel it’s an extremely important issue. . . . You can’t have one person be a dictator. . . . You have to be very careful when you try to lead other elected officials. They’re leaders themselves. They don’t like to be led and I do not attempt to lead them or to tell them what to do.”

As for criticism that he stays in Long Beach too much, Kell said: “In my opinion, in most cases there’s plenty of work to do here. I never have been one to do a lot of traveling.”

Following up on two campaign promises, Kell pushed successfully to create a city Office of Education and a Neighborhood and Historic Preservation Office. He lobbied the council to get the sidewalk and gang money and he lobbied harbor commissioners to allow harbor money to be used to help finance a planned $80-million Convention Center expansion, although the city is still researching the legality of that funding scheme.

In a city that has had about 150 AIDS cases reported so far this year, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 homeless, soaring housing prices and a 16% rise in the crime rate, Kell’s sidewalk priorities raised some eyebrows.

Kell has no apologies. “We have certain parts of the city where they pay very high taxes,” he said. “They receive very little social benefits, practically nothing. About the only thing they do receive is some maintenance on their sidewalks and tree trimming.”

Kell says the lack of a vote has not hurt him, but he believes the position should either have a vote on the council or a stronger veto. A task force is now considering the question of whether the new post should be altered in any way.

Task forces are one of Kell’s favorite methods of dealing with ticklish issues. Within the past year, for instance, he has appointed task forces to study transportation problems associated with new development and new sources of funding to expand the beleaguered police force.

In both instances, Kell picked up the issues from others, demonstrating his penchant for borrowing from other people’s political agendas. Historic and neighborhood preservation, for example, was a cornerstone of Luanne Pryor’s unsuccessful run against Kell last year.

Kell is often praised for forming task forces, but he does not necessarily embrace their recommendations. “It was nice he appointed a homeless task force,” remarked Dennis Rockway, an attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach and a member of that group. “Unfortunately, the most critical recommendations were never adopted.”

Activists complain that Kell has paid scant heed to pressing social service needs. Alan Lowenthal, director of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, praised Kell’s support of the police review board and other causes supported by the group, but added: “We just wish there was leadership on environmental, housing and social issues.”

Kell has won uneven ratings from Long Beach’s sizable minority communities.

Pointing to Kell’s support of the AIDS discrimination ordinance, David Newell, the head of one of the city’s most active gay organizations, says relations have warmed between Kell and Long Beach’s politically active gay community.

But a year after Kell took over the new mayoral post, Frank Berry, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, grumbled, “I cannot identify one situation that Mayor Kell has improved or caused to improve.”

He faulted Kell’s support of the police review board as “very cautious. He has not been assertive.”

Doris Topsy-Elvord, a black whom Kell appointed to the Civil Service Commission last year, was considerably more enthusiastic. “We have more minorities on city commissions under Mayor Kell than we’ve ever had before,” she said, adding that in the black community, “people know him by sight.”

Despite Kell’s appearances in the Latino community, he does not seem to have racked up many points with spokesmen for the city’s largest minority. “Where’s Ernie?” Robert Uranga, president of the local branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) wondered rhetorically. “The jury is still out. He has done very little outreach to the Hispanic community.”

“Ernie unfortunately has a sense that Hispanics have no position in this community,” contended David Dominguez, president of a Latino business group, who was slighted by Kell’s demeanor at a recent LULAC banquet. “I felt somewhat offended by the way he conducted himself. He didn’t do anything wrong. But he considered himself above it all.”

Kell’s wife, Jackie, plays a pivotal role in his public life. A local public schoolteacher with a law degree who is taking a leave of absence this year to help with the campaign, Jackie Kell has a reputation as an astute politician who is as important to Kell’s political career as he is. She regularly accompanies him to evening events and will even coach him in public.

When Kell launched his reelection campaign at a gathering of supporters in the back yard of his east-side home last summer, some of the answers he gave to reporters’ questions were supplied by his wife, who stood a few feet away, helping him through the press conference.

“He’s a lovely munchkin kind of person,” observed one council member, “But Jackie is clearly his strongest suit.”

Kell meets weekly with City Manager James Hankla but does not routinely huddle with either council members or city department heads outside of the weekly City Council meetings. The mayor’s days are devoted to a smorgasbord of ceremonial events, sessions with community representatives, supporters and businessmen.

He regularly sees key financial backers, many of whom he has appointed to city commissions. Harbor commissioner George Talin, attorney Samuel A. Keesal, realtor Elaine Hutchison, planning commissioner Jim Serles, and Joseph Prevratil, who is overseeing the expansion of the city’s convention center, are familiar names on Kell’s appointment calendar.

Kell is now more than half way through the abbreviated, two-year term that was designed as a bridge from the old, part-time mayor’s position--filled by a council member elected by the council--to something more. And that something more has yet to be fully defined.

“We’ve been on the honeymoon,” Gray said. “Not much is expected, not much has happened and nobody has been offended. But it is time for the honeymoon to stop.”

BACKGROUND When Ernie Kell was elected to the new position of full-time mayor in June, 1988, Long Beach became one of only a handful of California cities with a full-time mayor. The mayor presides over City Council meetings but does not have a vote on the council. The $67,500 a year position holds few powers. The mayor makes appointments to city boards and commissions, with council approval, and the mayor can veto council actions, but the veto can be overridden by a simple majority. Until he was elected to the full-time post, Kell represented the 5th District on the council. He had also held the ceremonial mayor’s job, filled by the council, since 1984. A task force, required by the City Charter amendment that created the new position, is now evaluating the post to recommend whether it should be changed in any manner. The post’s first term was for only two years, but will switch to a full four-year term with the 1990 election.