Mirror Profile

City Council Member Holbrook Considers An Assembly Run 

Photo by Carolanne Sudderth

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

   City Council member Robert Holbrook has spent 17 years serving the people of Santa Monica -- on the School Board, as Mayor, and on the Council. Now he may be turning to the northern horizon and Sacramento. His weather eye is on Sheila Kuehl’s Assembly seat (41st District ), as he’s considering becoming an Assembly candidate when Kuehl’s term expires next year.
   Both the Republican and Democratic parties approached him with the idea last year, he said, but he turned them down. 
   “I did think about it. At that point, I thought it would be impossible to beat Tom.”
   State Senator Tom Hayden,was expected to run for the Assembly seat when term limits forced him out of the upper house of the California Legislature, but now that Hayden has abandoned the race, things are different.
   Those rumors were scuttled when Hayden announced that he would seek election in the 42nd District rather than the 41st. 
   “Let’s just say I’m an interested observer,” Holbrook told the Mirror. He’s wary of the year-long effort a district wide campaign would require, but encouraged by the thought of an open primary. 
   “I’ve read about the list of hopefuls. I’d almost have to give up my job to do it. but I haven’t seen anybody on that list I couldn’t beat,” he said. 
   Holbrook’s nine-year tenure on the City Council is surpassed only by that of Ken Genser, who has held the post for eleven years. He was re-elected to a third term last November, the only member of the Civic Forum slate to be elected. Holbrook ran a neck-and -neck race with SMRR-supported Richard Bloom, and as ballots were tallied, the lead of a few dozen votes passed back and forth between them. At the end of the evening, Bloom had the majority and the Council seat. But absentee voters handed the final victory back to Holbrook, the winner by 92 votes, or 12 percent. 
   Last April, Bloom won his own Council seat in a special election to fill the remaining two years of Asha Greenberg’s term.
   Holbrook is a true native son. He was born in Santa Monica near the corner of fourth and Pacific Streets, and has lived his entire life here. He did his time at Santa Monica schools, including Santa Monica High School and Santa Monica College, before moving on to the University of Southern California, where he earned his Pharm D. (Doctor of Pharmacy) degree, a six-year pharmaceutical degree that gives him the right to call himself “Doctor.”
   Ten years ago, he went back to sample life on the other side of the desk. He’s now an assistant professor of clinical pharmacy and the director of the USC pharmacy. 
   “Anyone who has the good fortune to be working on a university campus is just blessed,” he said. “The people are happy, upbeat, and in the best years of their lives—especially as an alumnus. To go back to the college I attended .. . I have such fond memories.” 
   Holbrook got involved in politics when he ran for the School Board in 1982. “I was not an activist at all. I was just really shocked by a political party coming into town.” That political party was a newly-formed group calling themselves Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) who had just waged a successful campaign to get rent control instituted in Santa Monica. 
   “I was shocked when SMRR ran people for the School Board,” he said, “This was not a rent control issue.” When he learned that they were running four candidates for four open seats, he decided to join the race rather than let them “have every single seat on the school board .” 
   “Three of us ran, and we were told we had no chance, but we all won,” Holbrook grinned. 
   At the end of his seventh year, his last child graduated from high school. Believing that the parents should control the schools, he felt it was time to move on.
   Holbrook’s wife, Jean Ann, had become involved with the All-Santa Monica Coalition (that later became the Civic Forum.) She suggested he approach them if he was interested in running for City Council.
They told him it was hopeless, “and that I couldn’t win. It kind of bugged me. 
   “I spent five minutes lecturing that I had never lost an election in my life, and that I would win this one. And I did win.”
   He’s proud of small things and cites the recent renaming of Lincoln Park for Christine Reed as an example. “Everyday I drive by there I get a warm feeling. I’m so happy we were able to re-name that park for her.” 
   “I’m not a publicity grabber like some of my colleagues. I’m the kind of guy who likes to work behind the scenes a little bit.” 
   He’s proud of his part in negotiating an out-of-court settlement with Mobil Oil. Santa Monica’s well-field was contaminated with the gasoline additive, MTBE. The city believed that the source was the gas station that adjoined the field.. “We believed that they were responsible , and it looked like a 10-year battle winding down the road.” 
   “With MTBE being put in gasoline across the country, a court case would have set precedent.”
   He met with Mobil to focus on “people and clean water. Within about a month, we had a signed, sealed agreement. 
   “And that wasn’t something we did in chambers or with long public hearings., and we were able to make a big, big difference. and save the taxpayers and the shareholders millions of dollars. 
   “It’s obvious,” he said, that some Council Members have a global agenda, and might have seen the MTBE issue as a “global battle being fought at Santa Monica.” 
   “My agenda in Santa Monica is Santa Monica.” 
   That philosophy seems to extend into his spare time as well. Holbrook collects antique postcards of Santa Monica and Ocean Park. “Some of the best ones were mailed back east,” he said. He collects histories of the area as well, and happily guides willing listeners down memory lane to the days when Pier Avenue was the city’s business thoroughfare and the only cars on Neilson Way were the big Red ones. “