NEWS ANALYSIS : ELECTIONS: SANTA MONICA CITY COUNCIL : Candidates Try a New Theme on Rent Issue : Politics: Those running with SMRR backing insist that rent control needs their protection. But rivals say the City Charter provides a complete safeguard.

Rent control forces in Santa Monica are once again dusting off their catchy election-year November Song. But this year, their opponents are fighting back for the first time with a tune of their own.

They are up against what is easily one of the biggest hits in local politics, a simple but effective ditty that has served Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) well in its efforts to control the City Council.

“Vote for us,” the song begins, “or rent control will be gutted and you’ll be out in the streets.”

In an effort at counter-programming, a majority of the 18 City Council candidates, backed by the city’s powerful police and fire unions, are taking to the streets themselves with their own theme.

“Rent control is safe,” they sing. “It can only be changed by a vote of the people of Santa Monica, not by the City Council.”

Although the new song lacks a certain dramatic punch, the non-SMRR candidates insist that it is an accurate anthem and that it is time voters heard the truth.

“SMRR is telling people dishonestly (that) if they don’t put them in office, they will lose their rent control,” candidate Alan Weston said. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Candidate Tom Pyne agrees. “They’re giving out the same lie--that rent control is at stake,” he said. “They trade on fear. They foster fear and they do it every time.”

The rent control law, passed by voters in 1979, is a part of the City Charter and cannot be amended or jettisoned except by a vote of the people. About 70% of the city’s residents are renters, so such a vote is highly unlikely.

Even the rent control administration’s budget, which comes from an $11-a-month fee assessed to all rental units, is fixed by charter and is not subject to City Council review.

Still, the SMRR-endorsed council candidates and the group’s leaders insist that the council plays a key role in protecting rent control from depredation by the Legislature, courts, developers and landlords.

“If we have a council that just pays lip service to rent control, the state Legislature and the courts will take it apart,” said Mayor Pro Tem Judy Abdo, who is seeking reelection with SMRR backing.

“The City Council has a number of vital powers that have near-term and long-term very significant effects on rent control,” said retiring Councilman Dennis Zane, who is a paid consultant for the SMRR council slate. “If you have a City Council that isn’t with the program, then the potential for mischief is really quite profound.”

All current council candidates say they do not intend to tamper with rent control. However, as Zane suggests, the council does legally have the power to influence rent control in a variety of ways. For starters, it has the power to put ballot measures--including those about rent control--before the voters.

Other council powers that affect rent control are zoning and land use policies, demolitions and relocation, said Santa Monica Mayor Ken Genser, who is seeking reelection with SMRR backing.

Zane contends that any candidate who suggests that the council does not have an important role in protecting rent control is, by virtue of such a suggestion, a rent control foe.

What makes this debate more than a theoretical argument is the role being played in this year’s council campaign by the police and fire unions, whose members are mobilizing to let voters know what they believe the real issue is in Santa Monica this year: public safety.

“The issue this year is not rent control,” said Ron Wirtz, president of the Santa Monica Firefighters Assn. “We’re committed to battling the myth raised by Santa Monicans for Renters Rights that rent control would be endangered without a SMRR majority on the council.”

Genser is the only SMRR-supported candidate who has also won the police and fire unions’ backing. The unions have also endorsed challengers Weston, Asha Greenberg and Anthony Blain.

In past elections, Wirtz said, people have voted for the rent control slate and wound up with a council that favors social services at the expense of public safety and other basic services.

Given the SMRR dominance of the council, the unions are taking a risk in facing the rent control issue head on, and Wirtz said it will be interesting to see if voters respond. “If the voters are happy with the way the community is, the incumbents will be reelected, won’t they?”

The rank-and-file police officers and firefighters are combining forces this year to put out 1,200 signs, send out two mailers and canvass the city with more than 200 officers and their families to promote their slate.

“We’re saying, ‘Don’t get confused by the rent control issue because it will get dragged in,’ ” Wirtz said.

Indeed, Zane said SMRR is likely to emphasize the threat to rent control in its mail pieces and phone campaign, although other issues will be raised as well. “We believe it and it’s true,” Zane said, “but we’re not single issue by any means.”

One of the accomplishments Zane said SMRR will promote is the hiring of 39 new police officers in the last four years the group has controlled the City Council.

In the last several years, the City Council has taken a leading, but unsuccessful, role in fighting the state Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants and go out of the rental business provided they meet certain conditions.

When the Ellis fight was lost in the courts, the council placed an initiative on the ballot that required developers of new multiunit housing to include affordable housing units on each site. New housing construction came almost to a standstill because developers said the standards meant they could not make a profit.

The new standards, combined with the recession, have made it extremely difficult for landlords to sell properties at a profit for redevelopment.

As a result, Ellis Act evictions have virtually stopped in the city.

Of late, however, some of the council’s policies in defense of rent control may have worked the wrong way, said Chris Harding, an attorney who has won significant victories against the city in rent control cases. Harding contends that the SMRR majority is killing rent control with its zeal.

“The city has consistently lost every major case involving rent control in last four or five years,” Harding said. “That means the City Council majority has jeopardized rent control by being extreme on housing issues.”

Harding predicted that the city will eventually pay in Sacramento for its extreme positions, particularly after the state’s term-limits law forces the Legislature’s leading rent control champion, state Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles), to retire in two years.

Abdo takes an opposite view of Roberti’s impending departure. She said it means that maintaining an SMRR majority on the council is more important than ever to “protect the safety of residents in their homes.”

Another potential threat to rent control, in the eyes of some candidates, is a city law that allows landlords to convert apartments to condominiums provided tenants are given an opportunity to buy their units at a reasonable price.

Candidate George Hickey predicts that conversions will surge in the next few years and that owners will outnumber renters in the city by 1996, a development that would place great pressure on what is arguably the nation’s strongest rent control law.

In the meantime, however, landlord and candidate Patrick Regan takes the view that SMRR will continue to perpetuate itself by playing the rent control trump card.

“Providing a low-priced housing base in the form of a life estate to all tenants is a foolproof way to control enough votes to keep a benevolently corrupt political machine in power,” Regan said.

“People will always vote their pocketbooks.”