Manhattan Beach Mayor Narrowly Escapes Defeat, Councilman Loses

The strong opposition to utility undergrounding in Manhattan Beach launched one City Council career Tuesday and ended another as political novice Dan Stern garnered the highest number of votes and incumbent Councilman Larry Dougharty was soundly defeated with the fewest.

Mayor Connie Sieber was returned to the council for a second term. However, she was only 220 votes ahead of official write-in candidate Steven A. Napolitano, a college student who also is a newcomer to city politics.

The mayor called the outcome a surprise and said the election was not only a rejection of undergrounding but also reflected a more general discontent with the council. “The Napolitano vote says people are afraid of what the present council is doing,” she said.

Stern, an aerospace executive who did little campaigning and spent the final days of the race out of town on business, had accused the council during the campaign of “cramming undergrounding down everybody’s throats.” Napolitano had said the city should not play any role in undergrounding.

Dougharty, who believes undergrounding is desirable in some parts of the city, has come under attack because he helped devise a program in which the city pays part of the costs of such projects. A pilot project is under way in a beach neighborhood where residents petitioned for undergrounding and are paying about $4,500 apiece for the work.

Dougharty could not be reached after the election but said during the campaign that he was being unfairly singled out for supporting a city plan that helps pay for undergrounding after residents petition to form assessment districts to do the work.

Critics of undergrounding, who have spoken regularly at council meetings, say they object to the cost and do not want the program to spread to their neighborhoods.

In their campaigns, Stern and Napolitano charged the council with paying more attention to what developers want than to the desires of residents. Despite a project now under way to tighten and update city zoning regulations, both said the council is not doing enough to curb so-called “monster homes” in rustic neighborhoods.

Stern said his victory “really doesn’t have much to do with me but with the residents wanting someone who represents them.” He said he ran because “there is a perception that (the council) is not responsive to the people.”

Sieber rejected assertions that the council favors developers, but she said voters have registered displeasure at the way they are treated by the council. “People feel they are not heard, and this is political baggage for me,” she said. Both she and Stern called for a public vote on undergrounding.

Napolitano said he would have won if his name had been on the ballot and vowed to run again in two years. He said the vote showed discontent with Dougharty and Sieber and “the sense of indifference people feel” from the council.

Council members Pat Collins and Bob Holmes, who view the election as almost exclusively reflecting concerns about undergrounding, said that if Napolitano had been on the ballot, both he and Stern would have won.

Holmes said the election showed that both incumbents had been tainted by undergrounding. “The depth of anti-undergrounding sentiment in town was much deeper than anyone perceived,” he said.

Said Collins: “It was an issue the community spoke out on. Maybe it means we should listen a little more carefully.”