Belmont Shore’s landed gentry takes on peasants, loses

Everybody knows how the system works in Belmont Shore, and when nearly 300 people showed up at tiny Bayshore Library on Sept. 11 to vote in the local residents association election, everybody figured the system was working that way again. Especially the people who were working it.

“When the residents of Belmont Shore get mad,” said Parking Commission Chairman Bill Lorbeer, “they come out to do something about it.”

There was no reason to doubt him. Lorbeer grew up in the Shore, where people still know him as the No. 1 son of good ol’ Bud Lorbeer. Dad got very rich buying land—including a significant part of the Second Street business district—and has handed it down to his kids. Bill assessed the room packed with his loudly chattering neighbors. He smiled grimly and then pronounced: “This crowd is here because people are tired of Mike Ruehle.”

Ruehle is the renegade president of the Belmont Shore Residents Association. He spent his first year in office challenging the Second Street system—specifically, the group of powerful private business and property owners who amplify their power by doubling as government officials on the Business Association and Parking Commission.

Scenarios like that aren’t unusual in Long Beach, where overworked city officials frequently hand governing authority to well-positioned people. But some of the people use it to further their own interests under the guise of civic service.

In Belmont Shore, Ruehle has had the audacity to attack the system, suggesting that what’s good for the Second Street business class isn’t necessarily what’s best for the surrounding neighborhoods. In one high-profile case, he questioned the use of public money to improve private property and businesses belonging to Second Street’s wealthiest and best-connected. Some people not only consider that near-blasphemy, but it really hurts their feelings as well.

“I moved here 19 years ago, lived at First and Division,” said Parking Commission Vice-chairman Kurt Schneiter, another Second Street property owner. “Why should I now be penalized for being successful, for liking my community enough to where I’ve invested my money and time? Mike’s whole thing is to throw out inflammatory language to upset people and create fear. That’s not leadership. It’s divisiveness. But the people aren’t fooled. They’re ready to take back Belmont Shore. That’s why so many have come out tonight.”

Actually, until a few days earlier, there was barely a reason for anyone to vote—Ruehle and his officers were running unopposed. But then a slate of write-in candidates suddenly appeared, immediately assuming the role of rescuing reformers.

“This is not your father’s Belmont Shore!” bellowed local real estate agent Rich Carry on election night, making his case to replace Ruehle as president while pacing the library carpet like a street-corner evangelist. “These are neighborhoods of young professionals now! Families are moving in! When was the last time you had to call the police to shut down a wild party?”

Carry’s logic wasn’t easy to follow, and not only because he’s no young feller anymore. It’s because he was running atop a slate of candidates who were picked and/or promoted by officials of the Business Association and Parking Commission. Mix in the support of Third District City Council member Gary DeLong, and Carry may be right: It’s not your father’s Belmont Shore. It’s your grandfather’s.

Librarians didn’t even bother trying to shush the people waiting to vote. The line stretched out of the meeting room, down the hall, past the checkout desk, through the exit, descended the wheelchair ramp and into the parking lot, finally petering out just beyond a card table covered with campaign literature for the old guard’s slate of write-in candidates.

Council member DeLong hovered near the table. Thus far, his role in the effort to drive out Ruehle had included writing letters to the editor, sending e-mails to constituents and occasionally insulting him at city council meetings. In his most powerful critiques, DeLong portrays Ruehle as ineffective. His evidence? The fact that DeLong has refused to meet with him.

But now, out in the parking lot, DeLong approached the card table. He reached into the pocket of his green suit jacket and pulled out a packet of cards. Each card was covered with adhesive strips, and each strip was pre-printed with the name of an old-guard write-in candidate. DeLong gave a couple packets to a woman at the card table. She distributed them to voters as they joined the line, and just like that, writing in the challengers’ names became the even easier task of merely taping them on the ballot.

Back inside the library, poll workers had run out of pens for the voters. “We’re voting with crayons now!” laughed Heather Altman, after being saved by librarians who’d dipped into the stash of the kiddie arts-and-crafts classes. “All things considered, I think it’s appropriate!”

Across the room, DeLong made small talk with his constituents, periodically retreating for short conversations with Lorbeer and Schneiter. When asked about his hopes for the election, about his support for the effort to end the rule of Ruehle, he had nothing to say, changing the subject to the patriotism displayed by the large, loud turnout. “This is democracy!” DeLong said. “Isn’t it something?”

Asked about those cards of pre-printed adhesive stickers he’d been pulling from his pocket, he became slightly more expansive. “Uh. Oh. Well, I’m for change, yes,” DeLong said. “I’m definitely for moving things forward.”

All this would have seemed like a completely cold and calculating strategy by calloused shot-callers, except for how obviously convinced they were by the story they were telling themselves—that the huge turnout for a small election on a Thursday night was a measure of the esteem in which they were held by the people of Belmont Shore. They wholeheartedly believed in their own belovedness.

“Historically, the residents and the businesses of Belmont Shore have gotten along wonderfully,” Lorbeer said, chuckling as he struggled to be heard above the high-volume chatter. “Does this look to you like a group of people who don’t get along?”

Honestly, no, it did not. Those hundreds of people looked very happy, and most of them were undoubtedly even happier with the election’s surprising results—which returned Mike Ruehle and his officers to their positions for another year, suggesting that maybe this really isn’t your grandfather’s Belmont Shore anymore.

Tags: belmont shore, gary delong, Long Beach, Mike Ruehle