New faces enter City Council mix

Kleinberg top vote-getter, Burch defeats Woods

by Marcella Bernhard

Newcomers to Palo Alto politics swept into three of five open City Council seats Tuesday, Pinging a crowded and competitive race obsessed with the need for new leadership in City Hall to a close.

Judy Kleinberg, Nancy Lytle, Bern Beecham and incumbent Dena Mossar triumphed in Tuesday's election for four four-year City Council seats, while Jim Burch won a hard-fought contest for the half-term council seat vacated by Councilwoman Micki Schneider.

Although a small number of absentee ballots had yet to be counted at press time, the final tally was not expected to change the outcome. The five newly elected council members will begin their terms in January.

"I think everyone ran a very good race," said Burch, who faced close competition from Palo Alto Homeowners Association president Craig Woods. "I'm delighted and surprised (to win)."

The top three vote-getters--newcomers Kleinberg and Lytle and incumbent Mossar--secured solid leads early Tuesday evening and shared ecstatic hugs in City Council chambers at midnight.

"I'm feeling just enthralled," said Lytle, a former Palo Alto chief planning official who focused her campaign on improving facilities for the swelling ranks of Palo Alto children. "I am very thankful to the people who helped out in my campaign. It feels incredibly rewarding."

Kleinberg, an attorney and executive director of a nonprofit child and family advocacy organization, won more votes than any other candidate. "I'm amazed at how well I did; I was concerned I wouldn't come in fourth," Kleinberg said, adding, "I am overwhelmed by responsibility. This is a very important city."

Many view this year's City Council election as the dawn of a new political era in Palo Alto, ushered in by term limits restrictions enacted in 1992 and growing numbers of young families with children.

Past races were dominated by narrower fields of candidates, most of them incumbents. This year's election, in contrast, drew a group of talented professionals who pushed their diverse skills and interests and portrayed themselves as "outsiders" to Palo Alto politics.

"It was a healthy, competitive election. The community was hungry for that," Lytle said. "The majority of my committee had never participated in politics in Palo Alto. It just Pings in a whole new circle of folks."

Major themes throughout the race were voter dissatisfaction over the city's perceived overuse of consultants, a slow and tedious decision-making process, and lack of communication with the public. Although a last-minute mailer and rumors concerning Phyllis Cassel's and Bob Moss' campaigns caused a few ripples in the campaign's final week, the candidates avoided personal attacks and maintained Palo Alto's traditional standards of election politeness.

As the only incumbent running this year, however, Mossar was often forced to take the heat for unpopular council decisions--some that were made before she stepped into the seat vacated by Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian two years ago.

"It's very hard to be the only incumbent running, and one of the most popular things to talk about is how terrible the government is," Mossar said early Tuesday evening, as the first election numbers trickled in.

But Mossar, who has championed alternative transportation solutions such as the trial shuttle program while on the council, said she is excited to start work with her four newly elected colleagues.

"It's great, it's really exciting," Mossar said. "I am very hopeful."

Mossar added, "This council will be very open to new ideas and willing to experiment. ... We may end up doing things we never would have done before."

Candidates, their supporters and Palo Alto political junkies crowded into the Cardinal Hotel across the street from City Hall Tuesday evening to watch early results on television and the Santa Clara County Web site. Though there was little change in the rankings in the four-year council race as the hours passed, Beecham and former Mayor Mike Cobb were both within a dozen votes of winning the fourth spot for much of the evening.

Beecham, a 10-year member of the city's Planning Commission who has pledged to attack Palo Alto's traffic woes, attempted to avoid the early election numbers by planting himself as far as possible from the television in the Cardinal Hotel's lobby.

"I'm over here and the television is over there," Beecham said. "I'm relaxing. ... The die is cast."

Unlike the other winners, Beecham didn't stay long at City Hall to see the final results. Earlier in the evening, however, Beecham said he enjoyed the difficult campaign.

"The campaign was a real education. The part I liked so much was talking to people," Beecham said. "I did a lot of cold calls, and people would spend 15-20 minutes or more" on the phone discussing the issues.

"I like the people, I like the issues ... (campaigning) was a pleasure. The candidates all made a real effort to address the issues, not personalize controversial issues," Beecham said.

Cobb, who was on the City Council from 1982-93 and was mayor twice, admitted in October that his campaign never fully recovered from a late start.

"I've been going awfully hard for two months. I wish the winners well," Cobb said Tuesday.

Of Cobb's campaign, Councilwoman Liz Kniss said: "You've got to run a campaign and you've got to run it hard; he had a late start. It may also reflect that the town is changing faster than we think it is."

For the candidates, the past month's grueling routine included more than a dozen candidate forums and endorsement interviews, as well as soliciting donations from supporters and walking neighborhoods to hear voter concerns. Unlike previous years, the candidates' debate over the issues also took place in online chat rooms--such as one sponsored on the NeighborSpace Web site--and on the individual candidates' Web pages.

Two-year candidates Burch and Woods, who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum on issues of historic home preservation and design review for new homes, waged the most competitive matchup in Tuesday's race.

"It's obviously disappointing," Woods said. "I think we ran a very strong race; I don't know what else we could have done."

Though he leads the homeowners group formed in opposition to the historic preservation ordinance, Woods Poadened his campaign beyond that issue to address what he says is widespread voter discontent with Palo Alto's political process.

"I didn't focus on historic preservation," Woods said Tuesday. "I heard discontent while precinct walking, about people being concerned about being treated fairly. I heard that consistently."

The controversial historic preservation issue also struck a sour note during the last days of the race, after Palo Alto attorney Richard Alexander sent a mass mailing to homeowners, urging them to vote only for Kleinberg, Heyer and Woods and specifically not to aid "the election of those who wrote, supported and passed this (historic preservation) law, like Mossar, Lytle, and Burch."

Kleinberg, Heyer and Woods all say they did not see the letter, which some consider a violation of the candidates' campaign pledge to not permit the use of "whispering campaigns, libel, slander, or scurrilous attacks on any candidate."

Kleinberg says Alexander used her name without her permission and has publicly disavowed the letter. But the letter caused some heated words in the final days of the campaign between Burch and Kleinberg, who with Mossar used volunteers from Mid-Peninsula Action for Tomorrow to distribute campaign materials during the final weekend of the race.

Senior staff writer Don Kazak contributed to this report.