It Is Time for Me to ‘Come Out’ and Give My Full Support to Suzie Price for Mayor

I am part of the “old guard” of this city and one of the founding members and chairman of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations, as well as the first president of the Council of Business Organizations for this city.

I served on the board of the Gay/Lesbian Center back in the 1980s and was a pioneer of Gay Rights in this community. I presume you all know my involvement over the many decades I have lived in this town, so I won’t got through all of that again. Needless to say, I have witnessed the political descent into corruption of this city.

I have known both Rex Richardson and Suzie Price for as many years as they both have been involved in this city.

From my heart I have to support Suzie Price.

She has always done her research and is far more informed than any other council member. I may not agree with everything she voted for and she knows that.

I am against building a pool in Belmont Shore on the beach, but one cannot be a one issue voter. I have to look at the whole package.

One Has to Look at Character

Overall, Suzie brings to the table an incredible willingness to listen to the people of Long Beach.

In the many meetings I have attended where Suzie was present, she never spoke over anyone. She didn’t preach and she never dismissed anyone.

On the contrary, Rex Richardson has belittled people (myself included, waving his two fingers behind my head as I spoke to the associations of the north on the Land Use Element), has made fun of people, demeaned people and tried to bully his way through so many issues, it turns my stomach.

He is a “pay to play” politician of the very worst sort. For instance, he works for a company that bids for contracts with Long Beach and then votes on contracts for them. We used to call that bribery.

He has absolutely no shame in advocating for companies who are willing to line his pockets for their own benefit. Developers are his regular donors and he has rewarded them well. Have you noticed that they have only built market-rate, high-end housing for rich people to displace our poorer neighbors?

He voted for every single development downtown (41), which displaced over 30,000 people. They didn’t move to another neighborhood; they had to leave the city as they were priced out. Is this who you want as mayor?

Five years ago he voted to “terminate” the contracts with all of our trash haulers, so that his “pay for play” contributor, Waste Management Inc., could have a monopoly on the trash hauling for every commercial and multi-family building in this city. We warned him in good faith. He ignored us.

He promised me a position on a committee to oversee this transition over five years and then lied about it. When did that special committee meet? If I don’t know of it, then no one does. I didn’t know they were a contributor to his officeholder account.

Why is this important? Because we told the council that Waste Management Inc. took over with monopolies in Los Angeles, Industry, Compton, etc. and the trash rates went up 312% in one year.

This cost was passed on to every renter in those cities, whether they were a small business owner or a tenant in an apartment building.

Oh Rex will promise you the moon, but will stab you in the back and bring this city to the brink of bankruptcy. He is a machine politician.

Suzie has been one of the only common-sense votes on the City Council. Did she always vote our way? No. She is smart. She knew that if she voted against every single bat-shit crazy idea she would be branded a gadfly. Poor Gerrie Schipske was relegated to that position voting “no” every time. I can say, as much as I admired her consistency and tenacity, she was never able to build a coalition or a voting block. Suzie can create that.

Instead, Suzie waited for the important issues and explained the reasons why she opposed their headlong dash into fiscal insolvency.

We need Suzie Price’s knowledge and wisdom to dig us out of the hole this City Council has created for us all. With her intelligence and honest representation, we will have a chance to avoid the most disastrous results of the idiotic spending and counter-productive policies this machine politics city council has handed down to us all.

We will be entering into a difficult time of stress: a financial depression with no new income source to pay us out of the huge bills we have signed onto, and climate change, which will become ever more intense as each year passes.

Did any of you see the Peninsula this month? Watch out for more of the same, and we will not win with our present machine council.

Do you want a corrupt politician who is supported by the entire cadre of corrupt machine politicians? Or do you want a leader who, given our horrible prospects, may lead us out of the mess we find ourselves in?

Please vote for the one person who actually understands the consequences of our situation and is not willing to sell us out to the highest bidder. Vote for Suzie Price as mayor of Long Beach.

Robert E. Fox is the executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations