First in a series.
Sitting before a crackling early evening fire on the patio of Mike Cohen, Mr. Culver City, surrounded by more than two dozen ladies and gentlemen who believe in his answers, the reserved Marcus Tiggs last night became the first candidate for the City Council to turn on the lights in his campaign.
Add low-key and strongly serious to his personality package, and he emerges as a candidate who will not present in the stentorian manner commonly associated with politicians.
Kickoffs typically are raucous, glasses-clinking, talking-over-other-people affairs.
Not the Tiggs launching.
What could have been more American, however, than hearing the strains of Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” wafting from the brightly lighted Cohen kitchen onto the dimly illumined patio, where Mr. Tiggs quietly visited with a friend.
How will the fiscally oriented Mr. Tiggs, an attorney specializing in insolvency, separate himself from an already large field competing for three seats in the April City Council election?
“One thing that distinguishes me from the others is that I don’t necessarily have an attitude of ‘go along to get along,’” he said. “Some things are going to be happening in the future that will financially affect our city.”
Mr. Tiggs did not need a prompting question.
“No. 1,” he said, “Measure Y (the 2012- half-cent sales tax approved for 10 years) is going to sunset at a point. We have been getting a good $8 million from Measure Y. That is fantastic.
“I am concerned, though, because we are spending some of that money.
“I am also concerned that we are going to get the rainwater bill from the County. That is estimated to be $40 million.
“I am concerned about the Utility User’s Tax. There is legislation that could reduce the revenue from it.”
Mr. Tiggs’s opening choice of evaluations demonstrate, without elaboration, the kind of sober campaign he intends to run.
When dollar signs are removed, he lists three more personal reasons he aspires to be known as Councilman Tiggs:
“I am running on the length of time I have been in the city, on what I have done for the city, and on what I have done in 26 years as a career military officer.”
(To be continued)