2 Colleagues Attack Councilman’s Plan to Seek a 3rd Term : Redondo Beach: But city attorney says the council is powerless to prevent Ron Cawdrey from running, despite the city’s two-term limit.

Redondo Beach Councilman Ron Cawdrey was confronted this week by two of his fellow council members, who told him during a council meeting that his decision to run for reelection in defiance of the city’s two-term limit is illegal and a waste of taxpayer money.

Cawdrey, whose second term expires in March, announced last month he will seek reelection next year despite a City Charter provision mandating that he retire from the council. Cawdrey has said the term limit is unconstitutional.

But at the council’s regularly televised meeting Tuesday, at least two of his colleagues made it clear they don’t agree. During a routine motion to set the date of the 1991 municipal election, Councilwoman Barbara Doerr asked the city attorney whether the council could stop Cawdrey’s candidacy before his campaign begins.

“Our esteemed colleague has announced his intention to run for a third term--even though it’s illegal,” Doerr told the council crisply as Cawdrey leaned back, smiling determinedly, in his council seat.

But City Atty. Gordon Phillips told her that the charter provision prevents Cawdrey only from serving a third term. There is no prohibition, he said, against running.

“Well, then,” said Mayor Brad Parton, laughing, “can we write down on the ballots under Ron’s name, ‘He’s already served two terms?’ ”

Phillips laughed, too, but told Parton that there is nothing the council can do under the terms of the charter to impede Cawdrey’s candidacy. If Cawdrey wins, however, the city must refuse to swear him into office, Phillips said.

Cawdrey would then have to take the city to court to test the two-term limit. City officials have predicted the litigation could go on for two years or more.

Cawdrey remained silent throughout the ensuing discussion, though his firm smile never wavered.

The council held to the city attorney’s opinion and agreed to set the election date without amending it to ban Cawdrey’s bid for a third term. The vote was 4 to 1, with Doerr as the lone “no” vote. The councilwoman and former mayor said she would rather have forced Cawdrey to sue the city now, before the city spends money on an election that could be ruled invalid.

“I’d rather see you challenge the city now, and waste your money,” she told Cawdrey.

In an interview Wednesday, Cawdrey charged that Doerr “just wanted to make a political statement” and that Parton is nursing a grudge over Cawdrey’s decision to challenge the charter in court rather than via a ballot measure.

“Nothing in the charter says anything against my being a candidate for 50 terms if I so choose,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “If I win--and I will--it will be up to whoever doesn’t want me in office to try and take me on.”

Cawdrey has represented North Redondo Beach’s 5th District since 1982, when he was appointed 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.

According to the City Charter, Cawdrey must relinquish his council seat next year and cannot serve on the council again, except as mayor. In that position, too, the charter limits him to two terms.

Cawdrey has been talking since early this year about challenging the two-term limit, saying that it deprives the city of experienced leadership. Initially, he had planned to overturn the limit with a new ballot measure this year, but that idea was dropped in August after the council decided--with Cawdrey’s approval--not to hold a special election.

At that time, Cawdrey indicated he might challenge the term limit in court, and his fellow council members said they were not surprised when he announced Sept. 22 that he would run for council again.

“It will give me an opportunity to test the system,” he said, adding that it also would “give my constituents the opportunity to vote for whoever they want.”

Cawdrey--like other opponents of term limitations--says such restrictions are 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 whose blueprint for governing is derived from laws passed by the legislature--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 the limit in the charter city of Cerritos failed in Superior Court last year. It was not appealed.