12 Santa Monica Residents In Running For SMMUSD Board, No One From Malibu – 9 City Council Candidates
Written by 991KBU on August 10, 2020
As we reported last Friday afternoon…. there are nine city council candidates for this fall.
Regina Voarino, a Malibu Park businesswoman, took out petitions but apparently did not file them.
The deadline for filing nominating petitions with 20 valid voters signatures was today at 5 p.m.
Andy Lyon, Alia Ollikainen and Steve Uhring have filed their petitions, but their signatures have not yet been verified by the city clerk, Heather Glaser, she told KBUU News late today.
Paul Grisanti … Rick Mullen … Bruce Silverstein … Lance Simmens … Doug Stewart … Steve Uhring and Mark Wetton have made the ballot as qualified candidates.
Mullen is the incumbent.
The election will be on the same ballot as the presidential race in late October and November.
And notice … we don’t say election day.
Voting in Los Angeles starts on the 11th day before election day.
That would be a week before Halloween Day … the polls open for in-person voting on October 24th.
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Ralph Mechur, a longtime member of the Santa Moncia Malibu school board … is not going to run for re-election.
And that means the nominating period … to pull petitions for the school board race … is open until Wednesday.
There are three SMMUSD board of education seats up for election and a total of 13 residents, including incumbents Jon Kean and Maria Leon-Vazquez, are attempting to land one of the available spots in November.
None of them are from Malibu.
But …the last day to file nomination papers has been extended to this Wednesday … because Mechur chose not to run for reelection.
Mechur has served on the School Board since first being appointed in 2007.
He lost a re-election bid in November 2014 . but his buddies on the board reappointed him a few months later … to fill another vacancy.
Incumbent Jon kean was appinted to a vacant seat after losing an election run for the school board.
And Maria Leon-Vasquez has been a member of the school board for 20 years.
She has been under investigation since the L A Times revealed she had been voting on school contracts that benefitted her husband.
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Malibu is part of the Santa Monica College district.
Its’s board of education only has one challenger this year.
That would be Brian O’Neil … hoping to beat out one of the incumbents — Rob Greenstein Rader, Margaret Quinones-Perez or Susan Aminoff.
There are three available SMC board positions.
