Candidates for 2nd District in Long Beach call for full-time parking 'czar'

The two candidates seeking to represent Long Beach’s 2nd City Council District both called for what could essentially be described as a “parking czar” at their most recent debate.

Business owner Eric Gray and labor advocate Jeaine Pearce are ruing to represent an area of coastal Long Beach where parking is indeed often scarce. The district ranges from the Port of Long Beach to the downtown area and on to residential areas as far east as Redondo Avenue where houses often sit side by side to apartments.

Parking platforms

Gray, a business owner, and Pearce, a labor group organizer, said they favored having City Hall assign a full-time staffer to parking matters — moderator Darick J. Simpson used the term “parking czar” during a Monday evening debate on Padnet’s public access broadcast. Padnet is Long Beach Community Action Partnership’s local access chael and Simpson is the partnership’s executive director.

Pearce’s campaign platform also calls for city workers to lay out diagonal parking spaces on streets, asking business owners to let residents use parking lots at night and issuing parking permits to residents in some areas. She has also asserted that insufficient parking was a key reason she opposed a past proposal for a hotel that would have been built inside the 2nd District near the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Cherry Avenue.

(The hotel issue came up during a mid-February debate, when Gray challenged Pearce’s statement at the time, asserting that labor issues led to the Califoia Coastal Commission blocking the hotel project.)

Gray’s campaign released a platform statement on parking issues earlier this month, calling for permit parking and arrangements allowing residents to park in business lots as well as building parking garages in business areas, using hash marks to outline parking spaces while also reducing the lengths of red zones and allowing homeowners to rent their own driveways to neighbors in need of parking spaces.

Mailer controversy

Monday’s debate was generally a polite affair, although a recent campaign mailer aroused some discord between the two candidates. Gray’s campaign dispatched a mailer referring to Pearce’s prior voter registration with the American Independent Party and juxtaposing her image next to that of former Alabama goveor George Wallace, a segregationist who sought the presidency under that party’s baer in 1968.

The Gray campaign’s mailer also described the American Independent Party as an “extreme right-wing” association that opposes marriage equality while demanding strict pro-life policies and “freedom from the ‘lawless oppression of liberal rule.’”

Advertisement

The mode American Independent Party’s platform does indeed contain that attack on liberal politics and is also in opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Pearce, however, is a member of the Democratic Party and said she joined the American Independent Party in error after moving to Califoia from Texas. During Monday’s debate, she referred to recent Los Angeles Times coverage reporting that many people, including prominent liberals, have registered with the party despite having the intention of declaring themselves to be independent voters of the small “i” variety.

Asking a question sent from a member of the public, Simpson asked whether the anti-Pearce mailer was an example of deceptive campaigning. Gray replied that he does not believe Pearce holds racist nor homophobic views, but that a candidate ruing for office should be aware of which party she is registering with.

Pearce joined the Democratic Party in 2011. Monday, she said the mailer in question bent the truth about her political views.

“I’ve never supported any lies. I’ve never supported any misgivings,” she said after referring to the mailer during a later portion of the debate.

Voters will choose between Gray and Pearce on June 7.