It could be a good, clean fight, but whispers of carpetbagging and a hint of cronyism have left the contest to replace Long Beach Unified School Board Member Michael Ellis sounding all too familiar

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Has it already been two months since Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) Board Member Michael Shane Ellis resigned? Well, no, it hasn’t: Ellis’ resignation—which was announced quickly after The District Weekly revealed July 29 that there’d been a $15,000 bench warrant for his arrest for 11 months—was made official only on Sept. 1.

But time flies when there’s campaigning afoot—especially in Long Beach, where a culture of political insiderism survives . . . especially in its school-board elections, where carpetbagging remains a proud tradition. And so the contest to replace Ellis—best known for his misdemeanor hit-and-run and driving-under-the-influence charges—is already winging its way toward a Dec. 29 election. It will be the second of three school-related voting opportunities scheduled in the next five months.

That’s right. First comes the Nov. 3 decision on Measure T, the school district’s proposed parcel tax. Second is this election—to serve out the last few months of Ellis’ unexpired term—which is costing taxpayers more than $200,000. Third, in April, comes the regularly scheduled, once-every-four-years contest to refill Ellis’ District Three seat, which has a recent history of being vacated by school-board members moving on to Long Beach City Council.

Had enough? Even the savviest December candidate sounds a little rocked by the timing.

“I only filed . . . what is it: two weeks ago?” says first-time candidate—but well-known political insider—Richard G. Lewis, Jr., one of two contestants (there are five in the race) who filed papers to run on Oct. 2, the last day you could do so.

“The election is Dec. 29, and then the deadline to file to run in April is Jan. 15,” Lewis laments. “So literally two weeks after you’re elected you need to start all over again.” Don’t worry—he’ll be fine.

Lewis, who works as the financial controller for developer Jan Van Dijs and lives in the East Village Arts District, knows his way around a Long Beach election. The former owner of the now-shuttered Pates Fraiches restaurant (which was also in the East Village) is a board member of the downtown business association, Downtown Long Beach Associates, and, thanks to his association with Van Dijs—best known for his restoration of the Art Theatre—is well-acquainted with the city’s inner workings. How well-acquainted?

Like fellow candidate Pauline Gonzalez Stenberg, a retired, two-time PTA president, Lewis has hired a campaign manager. Doing so is not uncommon, but it’s certainly not compulsory in races like these. Stenberg hired Long Beach election veteran Jeffrey Adler; but Lewis’ choice is the more intriguing move: Cory Allen, a staffer for First District Councilman Robert Garcia.

Lewis, who advised Garcia during the councilmember’s successful campaign last year, is taking advantage of another connection, too: retaining the city’s Redevelopment Agency spokeswoman Victoria Ballesteros to handle his publicity. He calls her contribution “throwing another eye on it.” (Worth noting: Ballesteros’ boss, RDA Executive Director Craig Beck, sits on the executive board of the Downtown Long Beach Associates.)

“I think when you build a reputation, you can ask the people who have experience. You kind of look around to the people you respect and how they perform their jobs,” Lewis says of his choices—which are perfectly legal (provided neither Allen nor Ballesteros works for Lewis on city time), but could still raise eyebrows, considering their connections to city hall and beyond.

“We’re working a couple hours a night and then on Saturday and Sunday—and then just being very respectful,” Lewis says. “I know [Allen] has a full-time day job. We don’t talk during business hours.”

When I call Allen—during the day, at city hall—to confirm that he’s handling the Lewis campaign, the first words out of his mouth are: “I am [managing his campaign], but I can’t talk about it.” That’s good.

But less understandable is why Allen shows no interest in talking about his work on the Lewis campaign after hours. When I ask him for a non-city-issued phone number where I can reach him later on, things get weird. And mendacious.

“This is the only cell phone I have,” Allen claims. “I don’t have another phone. I prefer to do it by e-mail.” That’s . . . not so good? It’s hard to accept that he is telling the truth. A city official without a personal phone? Unlikely. But I e-mail him and thank him for his time. When I call Lewis, he confirms that the two men do much of their business by e-mail. When I call Garcia at his office, however, the councilmember contradicts his staffer.

“He has another cell phone,” says Garcia, “but he probably doesn’t want to be giving out his cell-phone number.”

Garcia chooses to view Allen’s strange little lie in the best possible light.

“I’m glad that [Allen] did what you just told me,” Garcia says. “He shouldn’t be talking politics on city time.”

Later that same night—nearly two hours after city hall has closed—I get an e-mail from Allen with the number to his other, personal cell phone.

Why the surreptitious behavior? Even the most experienced player in this election isn’t fazed about Lewis’ strong support network, despite the fact that Garcia has endorsed him.

“Eh, I don’t see much smoke there,” says Adler. “There’s nothing unusual about consultants working on an election.”

Adler notes that both Lowenthals—Bonnie and Suja—had campaign managers when they ran for this seat on the school board, and so did current school-board member John Meyer, whose endorsement is claimed by candidates John McGinnis, a retired Cerritos Community College dean, and Stenberg. (Meyer confirms he’s made a dual endorsement—and contributed $100 to each campaign.) Others agree with Adler.

“I think it goes with the awareness that the race is important, that it isn’t an unimportant venture to be a school-board member in the state of California,” says Delaine Eastin, the race’s most prestigious endorser, having served as California Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1995 to 2003. (Eastin endorses McGinnis, having worked with him during his time at the helm of the California Academic and Research Library Association and the California School Library Association.) “We’ve seen the professionalization of political races all over the state of California,” she says.

Which brings us to the question of what Lewis, or any of the other four candidates—United Cambodian Community Associate Project Director Raymond Chavarria, Los Angeles Unified School District teacher Kate Erin Conrath, McGinnis and Stenberg—will do if elected.

Will one of them become a fixture on the school board? An avuncular voice of the people, who sorely need a voice (considering that their last representative, Ellis, famously stopped attending school-board meetings three months to the day before announcing his resignation Aug. 5)? Or will he or she simply pull papers one day to run for city council? It’s worth asking. LBUSD’s District Three seat has become a stepping stone to the city council: Ellis’ immediate predecessors, Bonnie and Suja Lowenthal, both springboarded from the school board into city council. And Suja is endorsing Lewis.

Bonnie, who was elected last year to represent the 54th State Assembly District, served the school board’s District Three for seven years before being elected to Long Beach City Council’s First District in 2001. Her then-daughter-in-law Suja promptly ran for and won election to Bonnie’s still-warm school-board chair that same year, representing District Three for five years before making her way to city council in 2006, winning a special election to complete recently-resigned Second District Councilman Dan Baker’s unexpired term.

The Lowenthals, in turn, joined State Senator Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach), who’d preceded them to school board in 1988 before voters elected her the first Latina member of Long Beach City Council in 1994.

Some people see these political migrations as a tremendous loss of institutional knowledge—but others say that the same voters benefit in different ways.

“I’ll be honest with you: I wish more school-board members would get on as city council members,” Eastin says. “I think there ought to be a lot more collaboration between school districts and cities and less of this attitude that the kids belong to the school district from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and to the city from 3 p.m. to 8 the next morning. They’re in the same city, and there ought to be a sense of collaboration.”

The concern among some voters is that whomever they pick to replace Ellis will harbor similar ambitions to the Lowenthals and Oropeza. Naturally, every candidate on the ballot says emphatically that he/she will stay on the school board. If elected.

“That is not in my mind, even in the future,” says Chavarria, a nine-year District Three resident. “Living in this district many years, one of the reasons I want to run is I want to be a voice for this community. I don’t see a lot of parents from this district [getting involved], and they need to share their voices more.”

“My interest really remains in education,” says Conrath, 25, who—sign of the times—was laid off from her regular teaching job with LA Unified but is finding regular work substituting in the district. “That’s partly why I want to run for school board: because I feel like I have this unique perspective. If I were to take a position anywhere, it would be in education, not the city council.”

McGinnis is blunt: “I’m 64 years old. I have no intent of going on to higher office,” he says. “I’m running because I have a long history of service to higher education.”

And Lewis: “No,” says the father of two young children, one of whom is nearly old enough to start school. “I’m interested right now in just working on the school board and just making sure my children get the best education they can have. My focus is on the school board.”

Stenberg agrees: no city council for her.

“Not for me. I’m too old. I’m 66 years old, and I’m only doing this for what I mentioned: the students, parents and teachers have just not been represented,” says the child of Cuban immigrants, who arrived in America not too long B.C.—“Before Castro.”

“I came here when I was 11 years old, and so I understand students who come here without English skills and I can connect with them,” says Stenberg, who served as PTA president at Newcomb Academy and Millikan High School during the 1970s and 1980s respectively. “I’m here for them to have a better life, for Pete’s sake.” Of course, whoever wins the December election will have a better life, too: school-board members earn a monthly stipend of $1,500, provided they attend every meeting—not a living wage by itself, but an incentive, anyway.

And now for the accusations of carpetbagging—moving into District Three just to run for its school board seat—which is just what Ellis was accused of three years ago.

“The only interesting quirk about [this race] is, that’s what happened with Ellis,” says Adler, Stenberg’s political consultant.

“I thought this was why you were calling,” City Attorney Robert Shannon says when I call him to discuss the legality of hiring a city hall staffer to work after hours on a school-board campaign. (It’s still legal.)

Shannon quickly confirms that, yes, a representative of Long Beach Unified School District did contact the city to raise the possibility that candidate Kate Erin Conrath is indeed a carpetbagger—which would mean she’s lived in District Three less than the 30 days required by law before filing to run for school board.

But interestingly, Shannon and Assistant City Attorney Heather Mahood are almost as quick to say emphatically that the city will not be going after Conrath.

Says Shannon: “We know that it’s an issue because we’ve been approached.”

But, adds Mahood over the speakerphone: “It’s really not our call; it’s the county or the school district’s call. We’re not going to keep anybody off the ballot.”

Reached on a cell phone with an Illinois area code, Conrath explains why, nearly four years after moving to California, she only this month registered to vote in this state and is still updating her vehicle registration and her driver’s-license information.

“It’s something I’m kicking myself for. I didn’t see the opportunity coming to me,” Conrath says. “I’m obviously in favor of Ellis resigning as soon as he did, but I wasn’t counting on it. It kind of just came up.”

A Chicago native, Conrath says she moved to Long Beach in early 2006, living first in the 100 block of W. Sixth St., then moving a year-and-a-half ago to the 400 block of W. Seventh St., where she lives now.

Her residency became an issue, Conrath says, because despite moving across the country, she kept returning home to care for her father‚ and thus never updated any of her information.

“I don’t want to pull out the card, but Ellis wasn’t a resident for 30 days” before he ran, Conrath says—kinda pulling out the card as she speaks. “I think the whole point of it is that somebody doesn’t just move into the district and try to take over the district.”

That is the point. But unlike in 2006—when Long Beach Unified took Ellis to court—no one seems to be ready for litigation this time.

“On Ellis, what the school district wanted us to do was to go to court and prevent him from being on the ballot. I’m reluctant to do that ever, unless I have an ironclad case. It’s called democracy,” says Shannon, who believes the portion of the city charter dealing with school-board elections to be “not constitutional” and thus indefensible in court.

“We refused to take any action in the Ellis case,” Shannon says. “[The school district] went to court, you’ll recall, challenging Ellis—only on his ballot language, not on his residency requirement.”

As for that portion of the city charter pertaining to school board elections, if the school district “feels like it’s an issue,” Shannon says, it should ask to have the charter updated.

Too bad the school district won’t talk about its feelings.

“I don’t have any comment on that,” says Long Beach Unified Spokesman Chris Eftychiou when asked about Conrath’s residency. As to whether the school district contacted the city to inquire, he says, “Mmm, that’s a matter for Bob Shannon and not for the school district.”

And that’s it. Pressed with a few additional questions—how the school district came to question Conrath’s residency; what it feels should be done; whether it believes the city charter section should be updated and will ask the city to get right on that; and whether it plans a lawsuit against Conrath—Eftychiou suddenly gets weird, too. He just stops talking, goes completely silent. I can’t even hear him breathing on the other end of the telephone line. That’s right: the LBUSD’s taxpayer-salaried communication chief reacts to legitimate questions from the media by petulantly not communicating.

And this goes on for awhile. Eventually, I ask him whether he’s still there. He says he is, but when I ask another question—something that would elicit at least a “No comment” from almost any other publicity person anywhere—Eftychiou simply stops talking again.

It’s okay. That kind of silence never lasts.

You know that—just as it did when Ellis resigned—the school district will be issuing a press release. This one will arrive some time around New Year’s Eve, and it will officially introduce us to the winner of the Dec. 29 election.

Then, two weeks later, another group of candidates will file papers to campaign for District Three—this time, to serve a full, four-year term. And we’ll have to do it all over again.

Tags: bonnie lowenthal, carpetbagging, city counctil, election, Jan van Dijs, John McGinnis, Kate Erin Conrath, Long Beach, Long Beach Unified School District, Michael Ellis, Pauline Gonzalez Stenberg, Raymond Chavarria, rda, richard g. lewis, suja lowenthal