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California Greens Win Four of Five Races in Nov. 8 Elections
Pasadena City College Board Tops Victories
By: Mike Feinstein
Santa Monica, CA
California Greens won four of the five races they contested. Perhaps the most impressive as Hilary Bradburg-Huang's election to the Board of Trustees of Pasadena City College (PCC), defeating a 27-year incumbent, in what appeared months before the election to be a long-shot at best.
Bradbury-Huang was elected with 51.6 percent of the vote, winning by 377 votes out of 12,113 cast. An organizational psychologist, as well as an adjunct professor at USC and Pepperdine University, she campaigned door-to-door upon on listening more to students and teachers, and being willing to question the College administration when necessary. She also pushed for 'greening' the College and bringing sustainability to the students and community, emphasizing solar energy on campus and creating a more walkable city to deal with traffic and parking issues.
At the same time, she confounded those who tried to pigeonhole her as a single-issue environmentalist, by stressing the importance of building better relations between the College and the local small business community, including through promoting local internships and scholarships, to provide Greater Pasadena will a more educated workforce.
While her conservative opponent ran on 'living within the College budget', Bradbury-Huang stressed her background of organizational management and psychology, as a way of achieving greater synergy with those same resources among students, faculty and community.
Ultimately it was this breadth of this message, combined with the professional nature of her campaign, that put Bradbury-Huang over the top and let to her 'upset' victory.
Bradbury-Huang worked hard to personally reach every voter in her district, which contains the communities of South Pasadena, San Marino and Temple City. She walked door-to-door for the preceding two months before the campaign, and was supported in this effort by the local Green group in her area, the Arroyo Seco Greens.
At the same time, Bradbury-Huang pursued an aggressive, direct mail campaign in communicating her message, coordinate by political consultant Sharon Gilpin of the Gilpin Group, who has previously run winning Green City Council campaigns in Santa Monica. Overall the campaign raised and spent approximately $20,000. Turnout among the district's 30,000 registered voters was approximately 40 percent, about what was expected.
The PCC Faculty Chapter of the California Teachers Association, the Arroyo Seco Greens, ACT (a Pasadena based progressive voter action network) and many community leaders all endorsed Bradbury-Huang. And despite endorsing her incumbent opponent, the local Pasadena Star-News said about her, "the newcomer challenger is such an outstanding example of the kind of people we'd like to see in local elected office."
"Fairly new to the area, South Pasadena based Hilary Bradbury-Huang is a nationally known organizational psychologist who teaches at Pepperdine and USC and consults for major corporations on management effectiveness. Born and raised in Ireland before getting her graduate education here, she got involved at PCC by taking language classes. She has creative ideas about sustainable development and about making the college even more key to the local economy."
As an immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1985, speaks six languages and whose husband is Chinese-American, Bradbury-Huang has been a Green since living in Germany in the early 1980's. Yet she successfully appealed to many of the district's affluent and traditionally GOP voters, who were willing to vote Green if it meant improving education. She also campaigned directly in the growing Asian-American communities in her district, which make up sizeable pluralities in some areas.
With her election Bradbury-Huang becomes the seventh Green currently holding elected office in Los Angeles County and the second in the County to be elected to a Community College Board of Directors, following Nancy Pearlman (who also endorsed Bradbury-Huang) and who was elected to the 33-city Los Angeles Community College District Board in 2001. As of November 9th, 2005, 25,513 people were registered Green in Los Angeles County, the most in any county in the nation, and more than in any other state except New York (and California itself).
Elsewhere in California, Green incumbents Jim Harvey and Paul Perkovic won re-election to the Montara Water and Sanitary District (MWSD) Board in San Mateo County and Nicole Vigeant was uncontested in her bid to return to the Community Service Area, Tomales Village, in Marin County. Together, these bring to 65 the number of Greens holding elected office across the state. In addition, Dana Dillworth ran a viable City Council campaign in Brisbane, placing fifth out of nine seats for three seats, while James Marsh finished third for two seats on the Coastside Community Water District. Both races were also in San Mateo County. 
In their time in office and as community activists, Harvey and Perkovic helped make local water policy history by gaining water powers for the then Montara Sanitary District from a private company. This came as a result of a condemnation action filed in May 2002, following an 81 percent approval by Montara and Moss Beach voters to authorize up to $19 million in general obligation bonds to purchase and rehabilitate the water system
Harvey and Perkovic ran for re-election on both improving local water quality and supply, and on retaining responsive and representative community control over a critical environmental/community asset.
"Money was going to corporate profits and not getting back into the community. That was my first goal, to get the public takeover done", said Harvey, a Laboratory Technologist at Stanford Hospital, during his campaign. "Now we're making repairs on the system and successfully finding new sources of water."
"When the system was privately owned," added Perkovic, " the company was not willing to dig test wells to seek new water, because they didn't believe they could recover costs if the wells came up dry. Now that we have community control, we are making different choices based upon the public interest, and have found new sources of water in the process. This makes us more self-reliant in meeting current water needs, as well realizing the goals of our local coastal land use plan, which has limited growth objectives."
Both Harvey and Perkovic were endorsed by Sierra Club and the San Mateo County League for Coastside Protection, as well as the Green Party of San Mateo County, the latter of which distributed a newsletter to all registered Greens in the County with their picture and profile, precinct walked and put up yard signs for them. The MWSD provides water, sewer, and trash disposal services to the coastal communities of Montara, Moss Beach, and adjacent areas located north of Half Moon Bay and south of Pacifica, in San Mateo County. The District owns and operates water storage, treatment, and distribution facilities that provide potable water to about 5,000 people. The water served comes from one surface source, Montara Creek, and several wells that withdraw water from the Montara Creek and Denniston Creek groundwater basins.-
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