Denise Munro Robb
Denise Runs for City Council
Denise Munro Robb breaks new ground to build the Green base in Los Angeles
By Tera Little, Los Angeles Greens and Mike Feinstein, Mayor, Santa Monica
Her campaign started innocuously enough: standing in the door of the Peace Center on a warm May day, telling two friends that she was going to run for city council. By the end of the campaign, everything was in high gear, with over 250 volunteers walking precincts for her, phone-banking voters and standing on freeway off-ramps with campaign signs.
Denise Munro Robb, thirteen years an activist in her community - including as founder and current president of the Miracle Mile Action Committee (her neighborhood organization), former Executive Director of Southern California Americans for Democratic Action (the nation’s largest chapter), and member of the Wilshire Community Police Advisory Board.
For the previous two years, Robb had also played a key role as volunteer coordinator for the Los Angeles Greens, helping to build it into one of the strongest Green locals in the state. When the city council seat came open with the surprise passing of 35-year incumbent John Ferraro,
Robb saw an opening and took it. She quickly resigned her job with the National Immigration Law center to campaign full-time.
Robb faced several distinct challenges. First, in many ways, she started from scratch. Because the election was an unexpected one, she had no campaign plan, no fundraising, nor campaign staff.
Robb also would have to face three high profile opponents, all deep into their political careers, with high name recognition in the district - a Los Angeles Community College Board member, a former State Senator and the incumbent’s field staff officer. These three candidates spent $1.3
million between them helping make it the second most expensive primary election in Los Angeles history.
Despite these obstacles, Robb impacted the race, staring with the candidate debates. With her commitment to the issues, her debating skills and laser-like public presence, Robb literally changed the course of debate by forcing her opponents to adopt her issues. In the first
forum, Robb’s issues and approaches sounded unique. By the last debate virtually every candidate was emphasizing one or more of the issues she had raised.
Robb supported affordable housing and tenants rights, civilian review boards and community-based policing, and power for neighborhood councils to control development. She talked about campaign finance reform and instant run-off voting, living wage and workers rights, and acquiring
massive open spaces in the Ballona Wetlands on the Westside, in Taylor Yards downtown and by greening the LA River.
While she insisted on raising only ‘clean money’, Robb was an insistent fundraiser. She showed that a grassroots, progressive campaign is capable of generating meaningful funds from small contributions. Robb raised at least $25,000 in contributions of $250 or less, qualifying for an equal amount in public matching funds under Los Angeles’ public financing scheme. Including these matching funds, she raised over $60,000, one of the highest totals of any Green candidate in the U.S. ever. Robb also became one of a dozen Greens nationally to ever qualify for any form of public financing.
But no where did the difference in not taking developer money impact Robb’s campaign, than in contacting the 125,000 registered voters of the vast, heavily gerrymandered district.
While her ‘big three’ opponents showered the district with mail, Robb could afford only one piece, and that to only a portion of the district. She focused on ‘most likely voters’, such as those who voted in the 2001 LA city elections, for Ralph Nader in 2000 and/or were Robb supporters
in her 1997 bid for LA Charter Review Commission (in which she finished third).
In the campaigns last days, she also achieved a media ‘breakthrough’ of sorts, using civil disobedience to force KABC 790AM talk radio to put her on the air. After KABC interviewed the two top money candidates, but excluded her, Robb knew she had to act. Robb tells it thus: "Realizing how undemocratic and unrepresentative the radio station was by not even considering to invite any of the other candidates, I drove over to the radio station, drove through the gate, snuck into the station, and once caught, refused to leave until my voice was heard. When threatened by possible arrest, I did not budge an inch and eventually was interviewed
for a half-hour. I spoke the truth about the real issues facing Los Angeles and after the interview, a flood of newfound supporters called into our campaign office."
With the big three candidates finishing with 32%, 18.5% and 17.5%, Robb nevertheless carved out a solid base of 7.7% of the vote, finishing fifth of ten candidates. She also did far better on votes per dollar spent than the ‘top three’. Her vote total becomes more impressive when
realizing that the matching funds came into her campaign coffers only in the last two weeks, far too late wage an effective appeal for the early absentee ballots. These made up 1/3 of all votes cast.
Robb did twice as well on election day 9.1% - than she did in the absentee vote, where she garnered only 4.5%. Voter turnout was down on election day as well only 11.8% (17.6% overall including the absentees), because of the tragedies in New York City and Washington, DC. This hurt Robb as well because it resulted in a more conservative electorate, as renters, seniors and immigrants turned out in particularly low numbers.
In the end, Robb’s campaign did a great deal to build the Green Party, which was one of its primary objective. People in the city of Los Angeles got used to hearing Green issues and voting for Greens. Energy of Robb’s campaign was felt by Greens all over the state of California,
as Greens were motivated into action from as far away as San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Riverside County, and Orange County. The party gained valuable campaign experience and built connections that will only serve it well in the future. And the future is near as this special
election was there only to fill an unplanned vacancy, Robb is strongly considering running again when the seat is up for its regular election in a year and a half.