Vice Mayor safeguards himself & appointee
Vice Mayor supports an election map that protects Lakewood's longtime incumbents and an unelected appointee.
LAKEWOOD, CALIF. — Vice Mayor Steve Croft backed an electoral map that would snub Lakewood’s guidelines by giving a City Council district to an unelected appointee.
If adopted, the proposed map would also save Croft from having to run against any fellow incumbent in 2022. However, such a move would come at the expense of two duly elected councilmen, both of whom initially opposed appointing the unelected member to Council.
“He’s one of the slickest politicians that Lakewood has ever had,” said Greg Slaughter, whose contact with an attorney forced Council into transitioning to district elections.
Also benefiting the unelected appointee—Councilwoman Vicki Stuckey—Croft voiced support for delaying until 2024 giving district representation to East Lakewood, the city’s one region without a Council member. This would ensure that Croft, Stuckey and Councilman Todd Rogers, get the chance to run for election in 2022.
At 16 and 20 years, respectively, Croft and Rogers are Lakewood’s longest-serving Council members.
Such a delay received no support from the several residents who spoke at Council’s special meeting on Tuesday (Oct. 26, 2021).
“The Lakewood residents in the 90715 [area code] have...made their voice heard. They, I believe, should have an election in 2022,” said resident Alan Gafford during public comments, referring to East Lakewood’s area code.
Council was presented on Tuesday with three proposed election maps to carve Lakewood into five electoral districts: Maps 102, 103 and 104. The maps largely differ in regards to proposed District 3, which mostly maintains all of Lakewood north of Del Amo Boulevard and east of Bellflower Boulevard in map 102.
However, since two Council members live so close to each other in District 3, the city’s contractor also provided maps 103 and 104. Map 103 would create a northern Lakewood District 2 including Croft and Stuckey, while map 104 would follow weird boundary lines to ensure Stuckey and Croft have their own districts.
In all three proposed maps, the East Lakewood district—District 5—has the lowest percentage of non-Hispanic white people, along with the highest percentage of Hispanics, Asian Americans and immigrants. The area has a significant population that speaks both Spanish and Asian languages, per the contractor’s report, as well as the lowest-income residents in Lakewood.
Croft opposes Council’s optional map guidelines
Due to the congestion of Council members in central Lakewood, one Council member will lose his or her seat since East Lakewood will have its own Council district. None of the current Council members live east of the 605 Freeway.
“It’s mathematically inevitable that two Council members will be in the same seat,” said Doug Johnson, president of National Demographics Corporation, the contractor hired by Lakewood to draw the maps.
Guiding the Council’s decision are state and federal laws, as well as what the city’s contractor calls “Traditional Districting Principles”. These principles were adopted by Lakewood Council as optional criteria for the whole districting process, according to a National Demographics Corporation report.
One of these principles include, “Each council district shall respect the previous choices of voters by avoiding the creation of head-to-head contests, between Council Members previously elected by the voters.”
However, Croft on Tuesday supported the one proposed map that went against this guideline.
Map 104 gerrymanders three Council districts so that Croft and Council members Rogers and Stuckey would have their own districts. Meanwhile, Councilman Ariel Pe, who lives so near Stuckey that Map 104 had to run its dividing line along a storm drain near Pe’s backyard, would be forced to run against Mayor Jeff Wood in 2024.
This violates the city’s optional criteria since Pe is a duly elected Council member, while Stuckey was never “previously elected by the voters”. Instead, Stuckey was appointed in August 2020 to replace the then-retiring Councilwoman Diane DuBois.
Justifying his decision, Croft said he wanted to keep as many minorities on Lakewood Council as possible, when explaining why he rejected map 102, the only electoral map that would allow for the possibility of East Lakewood getting a district Council member in 2022.
“Map 102 would force our only woman and African American Council member [Stuckey] to compete against our only Asian Council member [Pe], resulting in one of them having to leave our Council if the other candidate runs and wins,” Croft said.
Croft could had decided to support map 103 if he wanted to avoid pitting Stuckey against Pe. However, map 103 would place Stuckey in the same district as Croft, allowing for the possibility of Croft to not be reelected in 2022.
Croft said he preferred map 104 because it supposedly had clearer boundaries.
“[Map 104] makes more sense to me [over map 103] and is more easily understood by residents as to where they fall within the districts,” said Croft.
However, to make map 104 work, the city’s contractor had to draw its boundaries along a side street and a storm drain rather than sticking to the main streets like map 102 and map 103. Also going against Croft’s reasoning is that the city’s contractor had to make a weird detour to the southwestern part of map 104 in order to maintain a population balance.
“We have to decide how our city can be equally divided for representation and also a very diverse Council,” said Stuckey without saying which map she preferred.
Pe voiced his displeasure with the situation.
“It is unfair that I have to possibly run another strategic ground campaign and possibly run again next year,” said Pe, who was elected in 2020. “In all honesty, I didn’t sign up for one term.”
“Now it is my opportunity to give back to the city. I’m here to stay,” Pe added.
Also complicating things is that Wood and Pe had initially disagreed with the decision to appoint Stuckey to Council. Both wanted the Council to instead hold a special election to replace the retiring DuBois, but when the Council had a deadlock 2-to-2 vote over whether to go with a special election or appointee, Pe changed his vote to allow for Stuckey to be appointed.
Wood and Rogers declined to publicly state which map they preferred.
What the voters had to say
About 15 non-staff and non-Council members attended Tuesday’s special meeting regarding the district election maps.
“We note that suspicious maps, number 103 and number 104, draw lines to favor incumbents. That’s not the intent of this process,” said Slaughter, a 2017 Council candidate who had contacted Attorney Kevin Shenkmen leading to the November 2020 demand letter for district elections.
Slaughter, himself an African American, had earlier rejected the notion that Council districts should be manipulated to ensure Stuckey retains her seat via map 104. He also voiced support for having long-term Council members retire in favor of younger candidates.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Slaughter called for districts that would allow for fairness towards residents.
Resident Joy James asked if all of East Lakewood could be put into one district. Under each proposed map, a portion of either the area’s northwestern or southwestern region would be inserted into a district including central Lakewood.
“If a district has more people, those people are particularly less represented,” said Johnson, the city’s contractor, on why the maps strive to have population parity.
Council hopefuls, Cassandra Chase (a member of Lakewood’s citizen oversight committee for Measure L funds) and Marisa Perez (a Cerritos College board member), spoke in favor of delaying the process to give residents more time to examine the maps. Both have attempted to be elected or appointed to Council in the past, and both pushed for the East Lakewood district to be given the right to vote for a Council member in 2022 rather than 2024.
Get involved
Email all Council members with your thoughts or questions at citycouncil@lakewoodcity.org and go to the next district election meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 9.
Citizens can view an interactive version of the maps online, and they can go to the city’s webpage for District Election information.
NOTE: Article originally posted October 30, 2021. Article updated at 3:35 p.m. to correct the description of Roger’s time on Council, which is currently at 20 years.
Map 103 also offers an east side election in 2022 and boundaries that make sense. However, I agree with the author that the boundaries and the alternative election sequence on Map 102 make it a more realistic choice over Map 103. Here's why: 103 puts Croft and Stuckey in the same District. They both have expiring terms in 2022, which makes it doubtful as a Council-majority choice. Croft nominated Stuckey for the council appointment just over a year ago to fill DuBois' vacated seat until 2022. Rogers' remarks at the council meeting the night of her swearing-in and their long history together in the LACSD, make it clear he was behind her appointment. Stuckey was Rogers' appointee to the city Planning Commission. Although I think 103 is a better map in terms of how school district lines fall, there's no way 103 gets approved, even though it's a better map. With 102, Stuckey can challenge Pe in 2024 if she wants to try to get back on the council when his term is up, and the boundaries are much better than Croft's choice of wacky 104.
Brian has offered an accurate assessment of the hearing and the maps. I will say that Map 103 also calls for an election on the east side in 2022 and I think it's a better map than 102 in terms of how the school district lines fall. School districts create communities of interest and are an important aspect of our community. 103 has no more than two school districts in any one council district. Map 102 has pieces of three school districts in District 2 (Croft).
Since Stuckey was appointed and not elected, she should not be given the same consideration as elected council members when it comes to drawing lines. One has to go -- there's no other way! Map 104 is clearly engineered to benefit her while pitting two ELECTED council members against each other. Unfortunately, Map 103 places Stuckey in the same district as Croft, who nominated her to fulfill Diane DuBois' unexpired term. Stuckey's close relationship with Todd Rogers and Roger's close relationship with Croft puts Rogers in a bind. The three are a majority voting block and will chose the final map. If they really want to do the right thing for the residents of Lakewood in the long term, they will vote for Map 103, the best choice, and give the voters on the east side an election. Failing that, Map 102, though not ideal, will still give the voters in 90715 the representation they want. If they go for Map 104 as drawn, it's purely self-serving -- Pe and Wood can't stop them.