By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

First of two parts

December 11 -- It's hard to beat an incumbent in any race, and that may be especially true in Santa Monica.

Precinct by precinct, City Council incumbents and the groups that backed them kept a lock on neighborhood strongholds in the November 7 race for three open council seats, a Lookout News analysis of post election results shows.

The analysis of the results in Santa Monica’s 72 precincts also show that fourth place finisher and political novice, Terry O'Day, finished third in most of the city’s apartment-rich areas, despite running without the backing of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), the city’s powerful tenants group.

From the posh mansions north of Montana Avenue to the high-density apartments packed with renters in the Wilshire Corridor, all three council incumbents -- Kevin McKeown Pam O'Connor and Mayor Bob Holbrook -- were able hold on to their traditional bases of support to hang on to their council seats.

"The big picture is that incumbents win, and people are generally satisfied," said Bruce Cameron, a long-time SMRR member and local political observer.

While the precinct counts do not include absentee and provisional ballots, which have been on the rise in recent years, they are a good indication of voting trends across the 8.3-square-mile beachfront city, Cameron said.

The Lookout’s analysis shows that SMRR, which has controlled local government for most of the past quarter century, dominated most of Santa Monica’s neighborhoods, except for the upscale, single-family areas North of Montana.

The top two vote getters -- SMRR members McKeown with 14,000 votes and O'Connor with 13,315 votes -- finished first and second in 47 of the 72 precincts, and placed first and third in 13 others. SMRR swept all three spots in 10 precincts, with Gleam Davis, who rounded out the ticket, finishing third.

Despite a hard-hitting campaign bankrolled by the owners of two local hotels, McKeown finished first in 46 of the 72 precincts, while O’Connor finished first in 13 precincts.

Holbrook, who has led the SMRR opposition for more than a decade, also finished first in 13 precincts, most of them in his home turf North of Montana.

SMRR held on to neighborhoods packed with renters that traditionally vote for the tenant group, including Ocean Park in the southwest side of the city, and the Wilshire Corridor -- which runs roughly between Wilshire and Montana Boulevards and 23rd Street and Centinela Avenue, the city’s eastern border.

In those two areas, SMRR candidates McKeown and O'Connor won 27 out of 30 precincts. McKeown was the top vote getter in both the Wilshire Corridor, with 2,579 votes, and in Ocean Park, with 1,991 votes. O’Connor finished second in both areas, with 2,424 and 1,764 votes respectively.

Holbrook finished third in the Wilshire Corridor with 2,172 votes, carrying those precincts with high concentrations of condominiums. He didn’t do as well in Ocean Park, however, finishing fifth with 1,208 votes.

SMRR also showed stronger gains than usual in some areas with large concentrations of homeowners, such as Sunset Park, a neighborhood in the southwestern area of the city that includes many single-family homes.

McKeown finished first in the area, with 1,670 votes, followed by O’Connor with 1,437 and Holbrook with 1,412 votes.

While the races for second and third place were tight in some Sunset Park precincts, SMRR made a strong showing in the area, with McKeown sweeping nine of the ten precincts and finishing second in the other.

O’Connor, who is widely considered as more moderate than McKeown, finished second in seven of the ten Sunset park precincts and third in the other three.

Holbrook, who once again led the SMRR opposition, finished first in one precinct, second in two precincts and third in seven precincts. Planning Commissioner O’Day, who along with Holbrook, was the beneficiary of a $400,000 campaign funded by the Edward Thomas Management Company, finished second in one of the ten precincts.

"My understanding is that we did quite well in Sunset Park," said SMRR co-founder Dennis Zane. "It shows that the values of people who back renters' rights are also the values of homeowners."

McKeown, O’Connor and Holbrook also finsihed in the top three spots in the Pico Neighborhood, the city’s poorest and most diverse aera. McKeown won handily with 698 votes, followed by O’Connor, with 637 and Holbrook with 496.

The three incumbents also took the Downtown precincts, with McKeown once again finishing first with 310 votes, followed by O’Connor with 292 and Holbrook with 235 votes.

If SMRR retained and, in some cases, expanded its base, Holbrook made a clean sweep in his home neighborhood North of Montana Boulevard, winning with 1,709, followed by O’Day with 1,331.

The mayor took nine out of the ten precincts in the upscale area, blowing out many of his opponents by 100 votes or more.

Yet while incumbents won outright, it took a boyish-faced activist and lanning Commissioner to do what many thought was next to impossible.