WESTSIDE / COVER STORY : UP AGAINST THE WALL : Renters’ Group Revolutionized Santa Monica Politics in the ‘70s, But Now It Must Fight for Power

IN THE RAINY PRE-DAWN HOURS, while the rest of Santa Monica slept, the party faithful assembled, as they always do.

Former Mayors Denny Zane and Jim Conn were there, as they have been from the beginning, along with Nancy Greenstein and Bruce Cameron, current mainstays of the group. They were joined by a contingent of newcomers on their first 4 a.m. foray onto the damp streets of the beach city.

The occasion was Election Day ’94. For 15 years, stalwart members of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) have trolled the streets of Santa Monica on Election Day in search of votes.

Nov. 8 was no exception. Trudging through renter neighborhoods, volunteers hung campaign flyers on voters’ doors. The goal was to get in the last political word by reminding renters where their interests lie: in protecting what is arguably the country’s toughest rent control law.

That message would seem an easy sell in Santa Monica, where 72% of residents are renters. But for the long-dominant renters’ organization, controlling the city politic has never been an easy task--and it is getting less so. After so many years, some tenants, it seems, have come to take rent control for granted.

It’s not the same for the SMRR hierarchy, either. While loyalties remain, the energy of the old days, of participating in a political vanguard, is getting harder and harder to replicate.

The changing political tide made itself felt in last month’s elections, which left the SMRR forces shaken, though still in control of the council by a 4-3 margin. With the defeat of SMRR-endorsed incumbent Tony Vazquez, the group found out just how much public safety defines local politics today. Vazquez, whom the group had envisioned as a bright new leader, was beaten by a political unknown running on a law-and-order slate.

The loss came despite the SMRR campaign’s own emphasis on public safety, along with its standard refrain about the need to protect rent control.

A major reason for SMRR’s bad fortunes has been the Northridge earthquake, which left in doubt the future of more than 1,000 damaged--and now empty--rental units, many of which had been home to SMRR loyalists. The temblor also made it likely that rents for hundreds of other apartments will be raised to pay for repairs.

Worse, a key feature of Santa Monica’s rent control law--that rents cannot rise to market levels when a unit is vacated--is likely to be gutted by the state Legislature this year or next, due to the loss of key legislators who protected it.

All of this could cut into SMRR’s political base by shrinking the number of residents living in low-rent apartments. Tenants paying market rent have no compelling economic reason to ally themselves with an organization whose main mission is to defend cut-rate rents.

SMRR’s most serious problem, however, may well lie within. Internal disagreements over development, public safety and policies on the homeless--stem in part from a clash of ‘60s values with ‘90s realities. Also, members’ individual political agendas sometimes clash with larger principles and group loyalty, causing further dissension. A case in point: the recent battle between Councilmen Paul Rosenstein and Ken Genser over the mayorship.

The result, many suggest, is that SMRR is simply petering out, a prospect that has for the first time prompted key activists to publicly recommend a major overhaul of the organization.

“Fifteen years is a long time for a single-issue organization to survive, so we’ve already beat the odds on that score,” said Brad Jones, who recently resigned after five years as SMRR co-chair, a major loss, group members say, because of his role in holding disparate factions together. “In order for SMRR to continue, we have to redefine, and broaden, our focus.”

Said Michael Tarbet, an SMRR founding member and attorney who ran the group’s fall campaign: The election was “a message, and the message is we have to get busy. Or we can continue to do nothing for two years and see what happens--and it’s not going to be good.”

At stake is the future of a grass-roots movement that won national attention soon after it emerged in the late 1970s. It gained support from former ‘60s campus radicals who remained in the area after working in Tom Hayden’s 1976 campaign for the U.S. Senate, which failed.

Denny Zane, for example, was working for the local chapter of Hayden’s controversial political organization, the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), which advocated redistribution of the nation’s wealth and other radical causes. In 1978, a group of seniors asked for CED’s help in their effort to pass a rent control law.

They were afraid Santa Monica was about to turn into Beverly Hills by the Sea. The sleepy beach city had been “discovered.” Rents were skyrocketing and “condo-mania”--the rush to evict tenants, tear down apartment houses and put up condominiums--was rampant.

Zane said Hayden was initially reluctant to have his people work on the rent-control issue because it would drain resources from one of the group’s main missions--solar energy.

Still, Zane and Parke Skelton, now a well-known political consultant, lent a hand to the seniors in the last six weeks of what turned out to be a losing effort.

It was a memorable election in that Proposition 13 was on the same ballot. Although the tax-cutting measure passed, rents did not go down as property taxes fell, leading Zane and others to argue for resubmitting a modified version of rent control to voters in 1979.

The young public interest lawyer who drafted the law, Robert M. Myers, reworked it; CED members used their campaign sophistication to set up a door-to-door fund-raising operation, and a coalition of groups favoring rent control was formed.

It was called Santa Monicans for Renters Rights.

In 1979, rent control won easily, but in many ways the struggle had just begun. Dolores Press, who served on the City Council and the Rent Board, recalls the volatile but exhilarating early days of rent control, when critics dubbed the city “The People’s Republic of Santa Monica.”

“We were under constant attack,” Press said. City officials “had police dogs at Rent Board meetings” to keep the peace as angry landlords clashed with tenants and fought the board’s new power over their property.

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For those who took part, the intensity of the struggle is unforgettable.

“It was like you had all shared some magnificent experience that would happen once in a lifetime,” Press said. “In a very short while it (became) anecdotal stories told over a few drinks.”

In 1979, Ruth Yannatta Goldway was elected to the council and became SMRR’s most vocal and visible symbol. Her husband, economist Derek Shearer, was also allied with the rent-control campaign.

With Hayden and then-wife Jane Fonda, Goldway and Shearer were featured in the national media as having fomented a revolution--the start of a nationwide progressive movement in local government.

Two years later, Zane, Press, Conn and the late Ken Edwards were swept into office in a SMRR landslide, and Goldway was elected mayor.

In 1983, however, SMRR’s less liberal opponents, basically a loosely knit group of several other political factions in town, figured out how to make inroads: They embraced rent control as a law they would uphold and Goldway was trounced as The All Santa Monica Coalition won three seats. SMRR blamed the defeat of the outspoken Goldway on their lack of sufficient attention to campaigning because so many SMRR leaders were busy running the city. Their consultant, Skelton, saw the problem as a failure to make a strong enough link between the SMRR ticket and the need to protect rent control.

It was to be a defining moment for SMRR, which soon thereafter became a direct membership organization, rather than a coalition of groups, that ranged from the CED to a seniors’ organization. The loss also begat what was SMRR’s master political stroke: getting local elections changed from the spring to the fall.

At the time, local elections were held in April, when fewer, and more conservative, people tend to vote. The SMRR forces quietly worked to move local elections to November to coincide with the gubernatorial and presidential races, which traditionally bring more Democrats to the polls.

Having local elections in November was one of many things that seemed to make the group indomitable. Among other key elements of the group’s past success:

* SMRR had a built-in voter base and a bread-and-butter issue that is a political consultant’s dream come true. Making up 80% of the city’s population in 1980 (the figure is now 72%), renters provided a rich pool of potential voters. SMRR had only to circulate campaign literature saying rent control was endangered to prevail at the polls.

* SMRR had--and still has--economic viability, built by an ongoing canvassing of renters for contributions. Paid fund-raisers gather contributions from scores of tenants. Moreover, the group has maintained a base of 5,000 dues-paying members.

* SMRR expanded its clout by becoming indispensable in electing Democrats to the state Legislature and U.S. House in districts that include Santa Monica.

Things began turning sour for the group in the late ‘80s, first over development questions and later over homeless and public safety issues. SMRR co-chair Nancy Greenstein said the group’s one person-one vote nominating conventions left it vulnerable to those with a single-issue agenda, such as slow growth. It was easy to join the organization, pack the sparsely attended conventions and nominate candidates who have greater allegiances to them than to the group.

But it took at least half a dozen years for the organization’s wear-and-tear to become evident, in part because the opposition forces were in disarray. Opinion is divided over whether the internal wrangling is any different now than in the early days, but most of the group’s pioneers say the disputes have become more public.

“There were probably just as many disagreements, but a whole lot more respect,” Press said. “Part of the loss of public confidence in SMRR has to do with (SMRR-elected council members’) attacks on each other in the newspapers and at public meetings.”

In one such instance, SMRR-backed council members who are renters made snide public comments about SMRR-backed council members who are homeowners, saying they couldn’t possibly be as vigorous in their defense of rent control.

Press complains that the group’s “lofty purpose” has also become obscured by politicians’ egos. Said Press: “I grow weary of egos.”

In the most recent clash, Genser refused to go along with his three SMRR allies on the council to elect Rosenstein as mayor because he wanted to be mayor himself. (Rosenstein and Councilwoman Judy Abdo, for their part, wouldn’t vote for Genser.) Genser and Rosenstein’s differences stem from disputes over development policies.

Efforts at intervention by the group’s steering committee failed and Rosenstein made a deal with his political opponents to get the vote he needed to win.

Rosenstein maintains that SMRR has become too insular and needs to focus its energy on the community at large to get ready for the day when rent control may not be the group’s defining issue.

“A preoccupation with internal problems has prevented SMRR from being as meaningful as it could be to the wider community,” he said.

Myers, on the other hand, said the group’s current problem comes from its willingness to discard--or downplay--the progressive values of the old days in order to win elections.

“Rather than concern with a vision . . . (SMRR) is concerned with holding onto power, no matter how it’s exercised,” said Myers, Santa Monica’s former city attorney. “Why would anyone want an organization like this running the city?”

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A third opinion, that of Abdo, is that the group has suffered because key members have simply moved on.

“People who have lived here a long time have become secure and stable in their homes or are having families and are not focused on the details” of SMRR, Abdo said. “A lot of our core people . . . are not active volunteers because their lives have changed.”

SMRR’s agenda, Abdo and others say, has always embraced more than rent control. They want people to know the role SMRR-elected public officials played in rebuilding the Santa Monica Municipal Pier, developing the Third Street Promenade and voting for the expansion of the Police Department. They also note with pride the city’s sound financial position.

And yet SMRR is better known lately as the group that allowed homeless people to overrun the city’s public places and resisted efforts to resolve the problem.

The reputation has stuck, despite two years in which the majority of SMRR-backed council members supported a public safety-minded bipartisan effort to toughen the city’s policies on the homeless.

The election results last month have prompted a lot of soul-searching within SMRR. The money for SMRR to wage a campaign was there, but despite a group of new volunteers recruited, the grass-roots effort fell far short of past efforts.

“In the early days, there was all this energy, enthusiasm and spirit,” Tarbet said. “We covered the city three times. . . . This time we didn’t cover the city once walking precincts.”

There is talk, not for the first time, of broadening the group’s appeal by changing its name to Santa Monicans for Renters and Residents Rights.

“We need to reach out to more homeowners,” Tarbet said.

While SMRR ponders its future, the group’s political foes, now organized as Citizens for a Safe Santa Monica, wait. Flush from a strong showing at the polls and better organized than they have been in half a dozen years, the group sees a chance to wrest control of the council from SMRR in 1996.

SMRR loyalists, however, say it won’t be so. “SMRR has already had nine lives,” Press said. “I think it will carry on.”

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The Players

Here is a look at some of the past leaders of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights:

DENNIS ZANE: After 12 years, sometimes working full-time as a council member, mayor and SMRR leader, Zane reluctantly retired in 1992. He now heads a nonprofit environmental group, the Coalition for Clean Air, and lives with his wife in a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica.

PARKE SKELTON: Founding member Skelton’s winning campaign strategy for SMRR provided him with the credibility needed to become a major political consultant. In recent years, he has run winning efforts for, among others, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. He still coordinates SMRR’s campaign mail for a fraction of his usual fee.

DEREK SHEARER: Forced off the Santa Monica Planning Commission after he and his wife, then-Mayor Ruth Yannatta Goldway, accepted free airplane tickets to London as part of an airline promotion, Shearer toiled as an Occidental College professor until Bill Clinton’s run for President. Shearer worked to elect Clinton, a longtime friend, amid talk that he would be rewarded with a Cabinet post. It didn’t happen (some speculated Shearer’s liberal writings on economics would have led to a confirmation fight). After quitting his first Administration job in the Commerce Department, Shearer was named ambassador to Finland.

RUTH YANNATTA GOLDWAY: After failing to win a second term on the City Council in 1983, Goldway went to work for a large medical corporation and later took a public relations job at the Getty Museum, which she gave up to move to Finland with Shearer. She made the news twice in recent years--by playing a Cabinet member in the film “Dave” and by receiving a sickbed visit from Hillary Clinton after undergoing surgery.

TOM HAYDEN: Hayden benefited greatly from his relationship with SMRR, which helped him win repeated terms in the state Assembly, where he was a key defender of rent control. In his tight race to move up to the state Senate, SMRR voters also helped provide him with an edge. Hayden still drops in at SMRR conventions, and ruffled some feathers this year when, without consulting his allies, he vehemently opposed a plan to develop the Civic Center.

DAVID FINKEL: A former member of the Rent Board and City Council, Finkel won a contested election in 1990 to become a Santa Monica municipal judge. His wife, artist Bruria Finkel, lost a bid last month to become a Santa Monica councilwoman, although she had the backing of SMRR.

JAMES CONN: The former councilman and mayor is a renter in the Ocean Park district whose landlord is one of the most outspoken critics of rent control. Conn is the pastor at The Church in Ocean Park, where, he said, he frets about SMRR’s future but leaves it up to those who followed him to either rejuvenate the group or let it die.

MICHAEL TARBET: A homeowner and tenants’ attorney, Tarbet was SMRR’s paid campaign manager this fall. He was also instrumental last year in fighting a measure in the state Legislature to weaken rent control, although he is less optimistic about the prospects to repeat that success because of changes in the legislative body.

DOLORES PRESS: Press failed to get enough valid signatures for her City Council reelection bid in 1983, but ran anyway as a write-in candidate, garnering about 13,000 votes. Though getting that many people to write in her name was an impressive achievement, it was not quite enough to win. Press went on to serve on the Rent Board and recently was reappointed to the city’s Commission on the Status of Women, of which she was a founding member. Press said her key interest now is electing more women to office.