City Ponders Councilman’s Abrupt Exit

A day after Long Beach City Councilman Dan Baker resigned during a speech in a council meeting, residents gossiped about his dramatic exit from local politics and city officials grappled with how best to fill his seat.

In a speech at the start of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. meeting, Baker announced that he was quitting his job, saying he and others were victims of a “witch hunt” by the press. His comments referred to recent reports in the Long Beach Press-Telegram of his previously undisclosed personal business dealings with the head of the city’s police union.

Baker could not be reached for comment Wednesday. City Atty. Bob Shannon said nobody at City Hall had spoken to the two-term councilman. But Shannon said he still planned to forward information about Baker’s business dealings with union leader Steve James to the California Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento next week.

Shannon, who is up for reelection, said he wanted to avoid any perception that he had a conflict of interest in the case, in part because he himself was endorsed by the police union.

The Press-Telegram raised questions about Baker’s vote on a pay raise for police officers two weeks after he and James had invested together in a multimillion-dollar apartment complex in Missouri.

Baker announced his resignation just minutes into the regular council meeting -- right after the mayor proudly shared the news that a Sacramento columnist had praised Long Beach as a role model for its recovery from financial crisis.

As a part-time councilman earning $28,000 annually, Baker said that he had to supplement his living elsewhere and that he did so through real estate. He said he had done nothing wrong in his real estate investments.

He also held up a check for $28.99 to cover what he said were personal business calls out of his City Hall office. He said he knew reporters had asked for his phone records.

Shannon said the council would meet Tuesday to legally declare Baker’s position vacant, and probably would decide then whether to appoint a replacement or hold a special election. The city has not named a council member to fill a vacancy in at least 30 years, he said.

The mayor’s office will handle the business of Baker’s 55,000 constituents for the time being, Shannon said.

In the heart of downtown Long Beach, which was part of Baker’s 2nd Council District, some people at cafes, smoke shops, galleries and dry cleaners said they didn’t follow local politics.

But while eating lunch at Smooth’s Sports Grille, former Councilman Mike Donelon said Baker’s decision to walk off the job in a meeting being shown live on cable TV was “without class” and “disrespectful to the people who voted for him.”

“I definitely think it was a conflict,” Les Robbins, a former councilman and retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sergeant, said of Baker’s partnership with James, as he lunched with Donelon. “When you’re an elected official, you live by perception.”

Others in the state’s fifth-largest city said they felt wistful about the departure of such a promising officeholder, who once boasted that he would be the first gay governor of California.

“He’s been a friend of the union since he was elected, so it wasn’t a secret,” said C.J. Derby, a friend and supporter of Baker and departing vice president of the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club, on which Baker, the city’s first openly gay council member, once served as president.

“I don’t think what he did was wrong; it was perfectly legal if he had just publicly stated his partnership,” Derby said.

“I’m saddened that someone who was such a rising star couldn’t have had a more graceful exit.”