Newsletter No. 79

• Why Chen will be a one-term mayor

• Chen's friends vs. Kalani's friends

• Kaji, Mauno break forum rules

• Pilots lose in court

• Candidate forum dates

George Chen may be Torrance’s mayor, but he is clueless about what it takes to be a leader.  

This newsletter edition will examine his mayoralty history and some of his missed opportunities to lead the city into financial solvency, to create a functioning coalition for the good of Torrance and to work with our neighboring cities. 

For Take Back Torrance readers who have subscribed from the beginning in June 2022, perhaps this will be old news. Whether you have followed Chen closely but wouldn’t mind a refresher or whether you are just beginning to recognize his leadership flaws, I am including Newsletter numbers if you want to read the original posts.

Just go to www.TakeBackTorrance.com and click on Newsletters and then the number.  

Let’s start with an interview Chen, the new mayor, gave Breeze reporter Clara Harter in August 2022 (https://www.dailybreeze.com/2022/08/08/a-month-into-his-term-torrances-new-mayor-discusses-life-city-priorities/).

When elected mayor, he had served four years on the Council and he told her that “his proudest moment” was getting “In God We Trust” on the wall of the Council Chambers.  

He couldn’t list his leadership achievements that had benefited residents. There were none. 

He also tried to justify his campaigning against SST, the sales tax increase that removed Torrance from the edge of bankruptcy. If you read his current campaign literature, however, he is taking credit for SST. And he is listing other accomplishments in which he was not involved (Newsletter No. 78). 

If a leader doesn’t have his own ideas, you can at least hope he works with others who do.  

Apparently, the only colleagues whose ideas he has liked are District 1’s Jon Kaji and District 5’s Aurelio Mattucci. They have pushed for Friendship Cities (Newsletter No. 26), leaving the LA County Health Department (Newsletter No. 64) and annexing El Camino Village, El Camino College and Alondra Park (Newsletters No. 61, 62).  

According to a City staff report, Friendship Cities has cost the City more than $350,000 with no benefit to Torrance (Newsletter No. 71).  

The other two would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, once again endangering the city’s financial stability. Fortunately, they have been successfully stymied by the Good Government 4 – District 4’s Sharon Kalani (and Chen’s opponent for mayor on the June 2 ballot), District 2’s Bridgett Lewis, District 3’s Asam Sheikh and District 6’s Jeremy Gerson).

But if Chen wins re-election, Kaji is re-elected and Mike Mauno and Michelle Brooks are elected, he will finally have four votes. 

And there will be no guardrails to spending the City’s money. 

Whom should Chen have turned to for governance wisdom: Then District 6’s Mike Griffiths – the longest-service councilmember – and Kalani. Though she had only two years’ service on the Council, Kalani’s leadership experience in business and the community was notable. Among other things, she had been a bank vice president and chair of the Torrance Area YMCA board of directors. 

Chen listened to neither. 

Ironically, Griffiths had guided Chen’s “proudest achievement” to success because Chen had no idea how to get an item passed. At an early meeting of his mayoralty, Griffiths made a good suggestion about reordering commission appointments so that the ones with judicial responsibilities went first when the strongest candidates were not yet picked for other commissions (Newsletter 5). 

Chen shot him down.  

Repeatedly he has shown no interest in giving any of the Good Government 4 a chance to propose something for which they could take credit. Consequently, when one of them wants the Council to take up something for consideration, they ask for a concurrence of their fellow GG4, and they generally get it. 

Chen had another reason for blowing off Griffiths’ request: The mayor had candidates in mind for Planning and Civil Service and knew they had slim chances if they were up first. 

That set off a string of events that made clear Chen’s term might be a one-and-done.

If you review only a few newsletters, these are the ones to read because they explain so much about how Chen operates and why he has botched his term: Newsletters 10, 10 update, 11 – and 12 if your eyes aren’t starting to glaze over. 

As the first Newsletter 10 explained, Chen wanted to take matters into his own hands because he had failed to get an ultra-conservative candidate appointed to his vacant Council seat. 

Kalani showed her mettle in the appointment process. She wanted a moderate in the Council seat and held firm. She repeatedly has shown her resolve in opposing other bad ideas Chen has proposed. 

If you missed the drama of what went into that appointment process, read Newsletters No. 1, 5, 6 special, 7 and 8. 

Good leaders also play well with others outside their organizations. In Chen’s case, he jumped on Kaji’s proposal for Friendship Cities. But he remained clueless about developing friends among potential nearby allies, such as Supervisor Janice Hahn and the mayors of Redondo Beach and Lawndale.  

Hahn was responsible for County grants that basically funded the Little Houses program which, so far, is credited with moving 80 people from the unhoused column. 

When she attended a Council meeting to talk about the unhoused, Chen did not give her the courtesy of addressing the Council. Instead, he made Hahn stand in line with the general community. And she was barely into her comments when the two-minute buzzer silenced her microphone (Newsletter No. 10). 

The Metro fiasco is a subject worthy of its own future newsletter because Chen, Kaji and Mattucci’s fingerprints are all over it. However, the issue resulted in an outcry that Chen was willing to make friends outside of America, but he didn’t know how to befriend his next-door neighbors.  

Let’s just say that a Katy Geissert or a Dee Hardison would have been meeting with the Redondo Beach and Lawndale mayors to look for mutually agreeable solutions to present to the Metro board so that Torrance’s Mary K. Giordano Transit Center could open for trains on schedule. 

This subject will be examined before the election, but anyone interested in learning more now, go to Newsletters 33, 34, 37, 47. 

Who fits Chen’s definition of good leadership? Donald J. Trump.  

In 2022, he told a podcaster, "Donald Trump is kind of like an Elon Musk. Disruptive thinker, practical, will not back down. And I think he is the kind of leader the country needs” (Newsletters No. 77, 78). 

Chen’s friends vs. Kalani’s friends: 

Who does Chen play well with? Evidently a lot of elected officials . . . in other cities and not the ones we need alliances with. He has been endorsed by the mayors of gated Rolling Hills and Cerritos.

Kalani, on the other hand, has been endorsed by former Torrance Mayors Frank Scotto, a Republican, and Pat Furey, a Democrat. She has pledged a nonpartisan approach to governing, and her list of endorsers reflects a broad base of involved Torrance residents from both parties.  

Chen’s latest doorhanger lists his top 20 supporters. I went to his website (https://www.vote4georgechen.com/endorsements.html) to see if the full list was more impressive. Judge for yourself. 

Candidates forums’ kickoff: 

North Torrance Neighborhood Assn. hosted the first one with the four candidates for Districts 1 and 3. The quality of their questions, devised and delivered by Kurt Weideman and Rita Anderson, set a high bar for the other forums. 

Marianne Hamada, the NTNA president, welcomed the audience and then said something I have never before heard in the 40 years I have attended various groups’ candidate forums: That her “role is not to censor or judge the truthfulness of statements.” 

She also said the candidates were not to comment on their opponents.

Bottom line: David Kartsonis, who is running against Kaji, and Sheikh followed the rules. Kaji and Mike Mauno, who is opposing Sheikh, did not. 

First question to all four: How long have you lived in your district. 

Kaji, whose home is in Rancho Palos Verdes and who uses a North Torrance address merely as a place for official mail to go (Newsletter No. 62), answered, “Five years.”

Kaji, however, didn’t sign a lease until January 2022. Maybe he is just bad at math. 

Mauno drew the audience’s wrath when he flagrantly broke the rules by misrepresenting Sheikh’s positions on multiple questions. The rules didn’t allow Sheikh to defend himself.

But Mauno clearly had lost any goodwill from some members of the audience who could be heard calling out, “Follow the rules.” 

An unhappy Hamada told me, “We clearly communicated the rules to all the candidates. Mauno had no questions and agreed to follow them. However, he completely disregarded the rules, and his behavior reveals his true character.“ 

Here are your chances to hear the candidates: 

• March 26. Council Districts 1, 3, 5. Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce. 

8:30 a.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, 21333 Hawthorne Blvd. 

• March 26. Mayor and City Treasurer. North Torrance Neighborhood Assn. 

7 p.m. North Torrance High School, 3620 W. 182^nd St. 

• April 1. Mayor and City Treasurer. Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce. 

8:30 a.m. Katy Geissert Library, 3301 Torrance Blvd. 

• April 6. Mayor, City Treasurer, Council District 5. Riviera Homeowners Assn. and Seaside Neighborhood Assn. 

7 p.m. South High School Auditorium, 4801 Pacific Coast Hwy. 

• April 13. Mayor and City Treasurer. Southwood HOA and West Torrance HOA. 

7 p.m. Bert Lynn Middle School, 5038 Halison St. 

• April 23. Mayor, City Treasurer, Council Districts 1, 3, 5. Torrance League of Women Voters. 

6:30 p.m. Toyota Meeting Hall, 3330 Civic Center Dr. 

Grounded: 

The group of pilots that fought the City on its new Torrance Airport regulations didn’t just lose their case. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter dismissed it with prejudice. That means they can’t bring it back at the lower court level.

Normally, judges leave a bit of an open door. In this case, Walter slammed it shut. 

Save Torrance with these candidates: 

The Chen cabal is reportedly raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his slate of candidates.  

The five candidates below don’t need the $70,000-per-candidate Chen’s PAC raised for his Council candidates in 2024. Despite being outspent by the PAC, Lewis and Gerson won election because they raised enough money to tell their stories.

To ensure a similar outcome for June 2, these websites have the necessary donation information: 

https://www.sharonkalaniformayor.com/ 

https://www.bettylieu.com/ 

https://www.david4torrance.com/ 

https://www.voteasam2026.com/ 

https://ilikemike4torrance.com 

Before I go:  

The City’s deadline for correspondence to be included in the Council’s pre-meeting public supplemental is 5:30 p.m. the Monday before the meeting. The Council will receive anything that comes in later before the meeting, but it won’t be posted until Wednesday. It will be at the top of the agenda. You can also leave voicemails to be included as Oral Communications in the supplemental. Call 310-618-2404 to leave up to a two-minute recording that will be transcribed. Voicemails have the same deadlines as the emails.  

Want to tell the City Council your opinion on an agenda item or address any concerns? The City has changed how to have your comments appear in an agenda item’s Staff Report. You should use the OneMeeting Public Portal at https://torranceca.primegov.com/public/portal?fromiframe=true.  

Jean Adelsman  

Feel free to share this email -- or tell friends about www.TakeBackTorrance.com. And if you email a response to jeanadelsman@yahoo.com, please indicate whether you are expressing a thought for my eyes only or whether I may share your comments with the whole audience.