At the 12th hour, the outgoing majority is forcing a bunch of non-emergency items on us. They should have discussed these items with us. |
The people overwhelmingly said at the polls [on Nov. 8] that the current administration needed to be changed, but these guys want to perpetuate it anyway. |
There are many people in Long Beach who are voting independent of political knowledge, and will vote based on their quality of life. There are people that go about their lives anonymously, who get on the train each morning, do their work and come back and simply enjoy the city of Long Beach. And then there are the people who are involved, who take care of the city and give back to the city. When I go to events in the city, I see many of the same faces each time. And that's a tight-knit group that crosses party lines. |
When I got on the council four years ago, I joined Denis Kelly in starting a moderate reform movement. Because we [Democrats] had a 5-0 council majority, we did not feel we needed to always agree 5-0, which is a sense the three of us [Democratic candidates] share now. The promise of the [GOP] coalition was to open it up, to invite the two holdovers to work with them, to continue our progress. That came to a grinding halt. There was no conversation or bipartisan involvement, to the point where Denis and I, two elected officials, were shut out of the running of the government. ... They made a lot of promises, and there was a lot of bait-and-switch. |