Blog | The Election: Your Choice, Your Vote, Your Future, Your City

In two weeks we will pick our next president, and Santa Monica will choose four City Council members. I have never been shy about my support for President Barack Obama. He took office in the middle of our worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and saved our country from slipping into another one. He did it with little help from a Republican-led House of Representatives which fought his every attempt to help our country. The great recession was caused, in part, by the same policies Mitt Romney is now peddling to you and the American people. Do not be fooled. President Obama saved the U.S. auto industry. He got bin Laden. Millions of people now have health care. President Obama has earned four more years and deserves your vote.

Here in Santa Monica, the choice is just as clear. Santa Monica is a special city. I'm running to keep it that way, and fight back against a pack of candidates who support a tide of over-development that threatens to change our way of life here forever. Elections are always about choices. You can support the two incumbents and their develop-happy allies, who will continue to take money from developers, approve their mega-projects and grow us into gridlock. Or you can choose a candidate like me. I don't and won't take money from developers. I will always put your interests, not theirs, first. Over the next two weeks your mailbox will fill with a blizzard of slick, full-color glossy brochures sent out by Council members and candidates who have sold their souls and will sell out your city. When those brochures fill your mailbox, I hope you'll ask yourself two questions: 1) Who do you think paid for those pretty mailers, and 2) What favors will be asked in return?  

If a City Council candidate needs to take money from developers to win a seat on the Council, they don't deserve a seat on the Council.

I'm running the right kind of campaign for the right reasons. I'm a teacher who will always put schools, kids, families, seniors and neighborhoods first. I'm an Emmy-winning journalist who will always get all the facts and listen to all sides, to make the best decisions that help the most people. The incumbents have questioned my experience. They suggest I don't know enough about the ins and outs of their City Hall. Baloney. Here's what I DO know: New ideas and new vision are exactly what the City Council needs. Every great Council member, like Kevin McKeown, was once a newcomer, just like me. I know City Hall doesn't work well sometimes. I know the City Council should work for YOU! And that's exactly what I'll do, every day as your Councilman. 

"John C. Smith, Common Name, Common Sense, for ALL of Santa Monica" is more than a slogan. It's who I am, what I stand for, and who I'll work for. I will lead, I will listen, I will represent you and safeguard our city, with your support and your vote November 6th. Thank you.