Following a grueling campaign season, Steve Aspel is breathing a long-awaited sigh of relief.
As per final figures issued by the City of Redondo Beach Monday afternoon, Aspel is the city’s next mayor, pending official approval by the City Council Tuesday night.
His campaign kicked off in late November and cleared its first hurdle on March 5, when Aspel and fellow incumbent councilmember Matt Kilroy entered a run-off to be mayor by each earning more votes than contenders Pat Aust and Eric Coleman.
The May 14 run-off election yielded a narrow margin – Aspel defeated Kilroy by just 148 votes – in a race that proved too close to call until Manzano and staff could verify signatures affixed to 631 provisional ballots.
Monday, Manzano announced the final outcome of the mayoral race: Aspel won with just 149 more votes than Kilroy, or 50.9 percent of the total tally.
Aspel puts the slim margin down to “lies, innuendos, and rumors” about him that circulated just weeks before the run-off.
Several political figures, including District 1 contender Jim Light, were publicly alleging Aspel had engaged in political intimidation and bullying by forcing former District 1 candidate Kim Fine to remove her name from Light’s ballot statement.
Aspel believes that if those rumors had never surfaced – he still denies them as baseless – he would have won with a clearer majority.
“That brought it back,” he said. “A lot of people said they weren’t going to vote for me because of this bullying charge, even though Kim Fine has refuted that and even knocked on doors for us and made phone calls for us on election day. That made the race closer than it should’ve been.”
He looks forward to healing the wounds inflicted during a controversial and hotly-contested election. Many of those, he said, stem from the debate over Measure A, a ballot initiative aimed at permanently retiring the AES power plant on Harbor Drive that lost by a slim margin in March.
He believes the City of Redondo Beach should mend the tears in its social fabric and leave the permitting process – by which AES could potentially get the green light to re-power its plant – to the relevant state agencies directing it.
“I hope to put this to bed,” Aspel said. “We’ll work with the CEC [California Energy Commission], they have the final say and we’ll still negotiate with AES about some kind of land deal but whatever zoning change would have to come into place would be by a vote of the people.
“…The people voted against Measure A. The silent majority of Redondo Beach isn’t all that upset about AES and we’re just going to work with them because this is a clean sweep. I won; Jeff Ginsburg won [in District 1], and Measure A lost so I’m hoping people will just remember that the citizens of Redondo Beach voted and they have to move on.”
Aspel believes the power plant is an important issue, but that it is not the city’s sole priority.
“I’ve said since day one that there are so many more things besides a power plant in Redondo Beach,” he said. “Obviously the minority of people have focused on the power plant but you talk to people in their neighborhoods, and whether it’s the old Bristol Farms site or the Knob Hill site or the car wash – pick a neighborhood and that’s their AES. It depends where you live. People are more concerned with things that affect their everyday lifestyles than they are about the AES plant, in my opinion.”
The former insurance salesman, who has in recent years made a name for himself as a city councilman who speaks his mind and cuts straight to the chase, said he will continue to be vocal and direct as mayor.
“I will be myself and they’re just gonna deal with it,” he joked Monday.
Among his early ambitions are moving the closed session – which precedes and follows most City Council meetings – up by an hour and putting a 10:00 p.m. limit on all meetings, even if that means convening more than twice a month.
“We can’t make really good decisions late at night,” he said. “…I don’t think people operate at their best late at night. I’d rather have more meetings than have late meetings.”
He reflected, and then joked: “I was elected mayor, not king. If I was king I’d say start meetings at 3 and end by 7.”
Aspel looks forward to moving past the long and volatile election period, which he admits took a toll on his family. He credits his wife and daughters with his drive to push through disillusionment and continue knocking on doors.
Redondo’s charter requires a majority vote, meaning that a candidate has to earn more than 50 percent of the total. This system typically engenders a run-off, which some political observers believe is a costly and ineffective way of doing things.
Aust, a 44-year city employee, said Redondo’s system is archaic and the only one of its kind in the Beach Cities.
Aspel agreed.
“We couldn’t go on much longer,” he said. “No way… Our system’s gotta change. I’m going to work on getting this on the ballot. I don’t believe this is the proper system. You’d have to change the city charter and I know there’s some people that don’t agree with that but [the run-off system] is too time-consuming, it’s too costly for the city… For not just me but Matt [Kilroy] and everybody else involved, this consumes your life. “We’ve been doing this for six or seven months and I would personally at this point in my life rather have the Torrance way where the number one vote-getter wins.”
At the very least, he said, it’s a change the council and the voters of Redondo Beach should consider.
“This is too brutal and grueling for people to go through. I don’t think anybody should go through this grief. Ten weeks is way too long. After the election, you have to go 10 more weeks.”
The two remaining candidates for treasurer – councilman Steve Diels and finance professional Dawn Esser – still have more than two months of campaigning to go. Diels is ahead with 3,230 votes, or 39.2 percent of the total, to Esser’s 3,109 votes. Chris Cagle, who pulled 22.9 percent of the votes with 1,886, did not make the July 23 run-off. Manzano said it is the City Council’s prerogative to conduct the election by mail, which would cut costs considerably.
The council votes to approve Aspel as mayor and determine a plan for the treasurer’s race run-off Tuesday night.
