WHAT I SAY: City Council Candidates: Council Candidates: Council Candidates: The Independent Challengers

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What I Say

Council Candidates: The Independent Challengers

By Frank Gruber

I'll conclude my columns on the City Council election with the independent candidates, the great unendorsed.

Bill Bauer and David Cole were originally running in a slate with Kathryn Morea, and much of what I said about Morea yesterday applies to them as well; namely, that it's hard for me to comprehend how such enjoyable people, with good senses of humor, manage to be so unhappy living in Santa Monica.

But Bauer and Cole are not always predictable and they have added something to this election. Bauer shocked me four years ago when he supported the downtown Target.

I've talked to Bauer and Cole about the homeless, and notwithstanding their need to call people names and blame people who are trying their best to fix a problem, they are not without constructive ideas. Cole, for instance, believes there is funding available from Social Security to pay for care for homeless people, if the City had the will to bring them to treatment.

I don't believe Bauer and Cole are unaware of the human tragedy around us; no more unaware, perhaps, than those on the left who choose to do nothing out of a misplaced regard for civil liberties, as if a person passed out in the gutter has liberty.

But you wouldn't know they have any sensitivity to the needs of others from reading their literature, which is all anger all the time, or from their Hieronymous Bosch version of Santa Monica.

As for Jonathan Mann, Linda Armstrong and Leticia Anderson, the three candidates who are running even more for their egos than regular politicians, I'll just wish them the best.

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