Campaign CASH: Speaker to Councilman Rogers
Speaker Rendon donates to Todd Rogers, campaign manager says.
By Brian Maquena
May 27, 2022
As Lakewood residents express anger over a developer’s plan to construct triplexes, Councilman Todd Rogers received a campaign donation from a leading supporter of housing density.
Disclaimer: This article was updated with new information late into the night.
Speaker Anthony Rendon—who last year helped pass legislation paving the way for the development of triplexes in place of 11 single-family homes in Lakewood—donated $250 to Rogers’ City Council reelection campaign, said Jose Ugarte, the speaker’s reelection campaign manager.
“He’s just known to endorse incumbents that have had no kind of [bad] scrutiny behind them,” Ugarte told the Lakewood Populist on Thursday.
Already Rendon has endorsed Rogers and Mayor Steve Croft, who together have been on Council a combined 38 years, Ugarte confirmed. In 2020, Rendon also endorsed then-candidate and now-Vice Mayor Ariel Pe after having endorsed Lakewood incumbents in 2017.
Speaker Rendon, who lives in Lakewood, helped pass Senate Bill 9 in 2021. Commonly referred to as SB-9, the legislation took away from cities their ability to zone for single-family residences and prevent developers from building multi-family housing like triplexes.
The goal of SB-9 was to provide more affordable housing, meaning that Council’s announcement Tuesday about a developer replacing single-family homes with triplexes would be welcomed news for SB-9 supporters. However, opponents say such housing density mandates lower property values and quality of life.
The Lakewood Populist has reported on how east Lakewood, where the city over the years has zoned a vast majority of its multi-family housing, has near half the city’s homicides since 2000. Now that the rest of Lakewood is about to be hit by multi-family housing development, city leaders like Rogers and Croft have come out against such state housing-density mandates.
Or, did they?
The Lakewood Populist on Wednesday revealed old campaign mailers showing Rogers, Croft and former longtime incumbent Diane DuBois proudly endorsing Rendon for his 2020 reelection campaign. Rendon went onto to pass SB-9 the next year but he had already been well known for backing housing density legislation.
This begs the question: Are Rogers and Croft actually against SB-9 and other housing-density mandates? Or, are they OK with such mandates and only claim to be against it when it serves political ends?
Further complicating matters is the fact that other Lakewood leaders who did not receive Rendon’s endorsements were able to force the speaker to mitigate SB-9 after speaking out publicly.
Two Lakewood leaders used social media to call out Rendon over SB-9, said Ugarte, who couldn’t remember the names of the individuals, describing them as Republicans.
“We saw it and immediately called them,” said Ugarte, who explained that Rendon helped mitigate SB-9 with about five provisions.
The attacks against Rendon stopped as a result, Ugarte said. Paramount was another city that didn’t support SB-9, while other cities in Rendon’s assembly district were behind the measure.
“It was very contentious,” Ugarte said.
So which is it? Do Rogers and Croft oppose Rendon’s and other’s housing-density legislation, or do they support such legislation?
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