Councilman to Seek Reelection Despite Limit of Two Terms : Redondo Beach: After eight years on the City Council, Ron Cawdrey isn’t ready to step down. He says the City Charter’s limit is unconstitutional.

A Redondo Beach city councilman who must relinquish his post in six months has announced he will defy the City Charter’s two-term limit and run for reelection.

Ron Cawdrey, whose second term expires in March, made the surprise announcement Saturday at a constituent meeting in the city’s northern Fifth District and confirmed his intentions Thursday in an interview.

Although voters amended the City Charter 15 years ago to restrict the mayor and council to only two terms, Cawdrey said his lawyers have advised him that the limit is unconstitutional. Initially, he had hoped to overturn the limit with a new ballot measure this year, but plans for a special election were dropped in August after the City Council decided--with Cawdrey’s approval--that a special election is not necessary.

“I didn’t want to spend taxpayers’ money to put it on the ballot,” Cawdrey explained. At that time, however, he indicated he might contest the charter rule in court.

“It will give me an opportunity to test the system,” the 54-year-old councilman said this week. And, he added, “It will give my constituents the opportunity to vote for whoever they want.”

Critics responded that Cawdrey’s move comes at a time when term limits are being touted statewide, and even nationwide, as a means of campaign reform.

Prospective candidates Mary Rockwell and Roberleigh Richester castigated Cawdrey for refusing to relinquish his seat.

“It’s greed,” Richester said. “It’s simply self-serving when you come to the end of your line and say, ‘I don’t care how the people voted, I’m going to defy them and run.’ That’s a poor loser, as far as I’m concerned.”

Rockwell added: “Even the President of the United States is limited to two terms.”

Mayor Brad Parton said he will encourage voters in Cawdrey’s Fifth District to vote against his third term, and Councilman Stevan Colin said the move was a waste of money that would “get nowhere.”

Councilwoman Barbara Doerr, a former mayor who ran for City Council when her two mayoral terms were up, said Cawdrey’s move would be a “burden on the community” because taxpayers would bear the cost of litigating the City Charter should Cawdrey win in the March election.

“I think he should gracefully say, ‘Thank you,’ sit out for two years and run for mayor (when Parton’s four-year term ends),” she said.

But Councilwoman Kay Horrell saw “something to be said on both sides.”

“If someone is doing an outstanding job, it’s kind of a shame not to let them continue,” Horrell said. “There is another way of getting rid of dead wood, and that’s to vote the rascals out.”

And Larry Cote, a constituent in Cawdrey’s district and an activist in local government, said he plans to support Cawdrey’s candidacy.

“I don’t know that it’s bad to have an experienced representative,” he said.

Cawdrey was appointed to the council in 1982 to fill the unexpired term of Gene King, who resigned. The following year he was elected to a four-year term, and in 1985 he withstood a recall campaign led by community activists who opposed his backing of a plan to develop the defunct Aviation High School campus. He was reelected in 1987.

Cawdrey--like other opponents of term limitations in the state--argued that the limitations may be illegal because, under the California Constitution, the state holds jurisdiction over questions of eligibility to hold office.

An appellate court in San Francisco used that reasoning last year to rule that general law cities--those without charters that rely on the general laws of the state for their authority to govern--cannot impose term limits. But the ability of charter cities, such as Redondo Beach, to limit terms has never been determined by the appellate courts. A challenge to a limit in the charter city of Cerritos failed in Superior Court last year. It was not appealed.

City Clerk John Oliver said that while the charter prevents Cawdrey from serving a third consecutive term, there are no legal prohibitions against him declaring his candidacy Dec. 6 when the formal filing period begins.