Candidate Susan Cloke doesn't like to talk in sound bites.

"I don't use buzz words," said Cloke, a land use, design and development consultant. "I'm not a knee-jerk kind of person. I should have been a professor."

Instead of the lecture podium, the former dancer has found a different kind of forum in city government, where she served as a planning commissioner in the 1980s and currently sits on the Recreation and Parks board.

On the campaign trail, Cloke also avoids pat answers, often failing to deliver the cut-and-dried positions that voters expect. Ask her where she stands on Playa Vista -- as she was during a candidates debate at Santa Monica Shores Tuesday night -- and her answer turns to what can't be done due to practical considerations.

"Political hyperbole is one thing," Cloke said. "We all care about the environment. The question is, 'What can we do?' The city is not a decision maker in the Ballona Wetlands."

It wasn't what the crowd - which rumbled its disapproval -- wanted to hear. But Cloke says she isn't running to take simple positions in order to win votes.

"I have a commitment and an openness," Cloke said. "It's not me trying to dictate to people that we will take this path. I want to bring everyone to the table and look at all the options."

Cloke's critics, however, worry just how open she will be when it comes to development issues. After all, a quarter - more than 50 -- of the 212 contributors who have given her campaign $100 or more are developers, Realtors, architects and their representatives. In fact, several of Cloke's backers are major developers with large projects in the city.

Cloke says developers represent only a small portion of her total contributors, which number nearly 400 and come from a wide array of backgrounds.

"Not everybody can own you," she said. "When you have a broad base of support, you have no choice but to build consensus. People know that I keep an open mind."

On the surface, Cloke's positions are similar to her key opponent, Richard Bloom, who finished nearly 1,800 votes ahead of her in the November race. Both back the need for increased tenant protections and more affordable housing.

But where Bloom wants to raise the fees developers must pay the city in order to avoid building low and moderate cost housing on site, Cloke believes the current fee is one "we can all be proud of."

"Is the fee enough?" Cloke asks. "It doesn't have to be enough. We can combine different sources of income and use that money to leverage other funds."

Cloke, who was a deputy planner for Gloria Molina when the county supervisor sat on the LA City Council, wants to increase opportunities for tenants to purchase their apartments.

But if Cloke says she likes to avoid buzz words and simplistic answers, she seems to make one exception - and she does so nearly every chance she gets.

"I'm the only woman in the race," she says.