Summary: The passing of Cathedral City Mayor Greg Pettis, a little more than a month into his mayoralty, has provoked a bit of a political donnybrook in the community. Pettis, the first of Cathedral City’s rotating mayors was also the Council member representing District 1 under the newly adopted district map by which councilmembers are now elected in Cathedral City.
The Council seems inclined to want to adopt the not-entirely-Democratic expedient of appointing a successor to fill out the remainder of the late Mayor’s turn. Already two candidates are being heavily urged on the Council by various not-disinterested political players. Unsuccessful district 4 Council candidate and former planning Commissioner John Rivera is urging the appointment of former councilmember Shelley Kaplan. Former mayor Kathleen DeRosa is throwing her support behind former mayor and district 3 resident Stan Henry. Both sides need to knock it off. The Council should not presume to substitute the wisdom of five for the wisdom of thousands. The only honest resolution to this issue is a special election.
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When the late Mayor Greg Pettis took office on December 10, 2018, his ascension to the mayoralty was greeted with more hope, and more general goodwill then the ascension of almost any mayor of Cathedral city since incorporation. His death, attributed to complications from bariatric weight loss surgery barely a month into his term, seemed like a vitiation of that promise. It certainly bears a suspicious resemblance to the death of Soviet War Commissar Mikhail Frunze following routine ulcer surgery on October 31, 1925. It is widely believed in both Russia and the West that the Frunze surgery was intentionally botched on orders from Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin.
Whether Mayor Pettis’s passing was the result of explainable complications from his gastric bypass surgery or a Stalin-esque hit, the result has been to leave the Council seat representing District 1 vacant.
The Council, apparently uncomfortable with the idea of letting the people of District 1 elect their representative, appears intent on appointing someone to fill out the unexpired term created by the vacancy. Already, two contenders have emerged. One is former councilmember Shelley Kaplan, who does happen to live in the district, but who was defeated in his unsuccessful bid for election to the governing board of the Desert Healthcare District in November of last year. It is worth questioning whether it would be altogether wise to treat a seat on the Cathedral City City Council as a “consolation prize” for an unsuccessful candidate for another office. We may infer from Mr. Kaplan’s unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Desert Healthcare District board that he feels that his talents could be better employed elsewhere. Certainly his remarks at the swearing-in of the new Council on December 10, 2018, suggest that he is no longer interested in serving on the Council.
The other candidate being put forward to fill Mayor Pettis’s unexpired term is former Mayor Stan Henry. And here the situation becomes even more problematic. Not only is Henry’s candidacy tainted, fatally in my view, by the active support of former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, but Mr. Henry himself does not reside in District 1. From a legal standpoint Henry’s candidacy may be barred for a number of reasons. The most obvious is his non-residency in the district he would be representing. California law requires councilmembers in a districted city be resident in the district they represent. Former Los Angeles councilmembers Roderick Wright and Richard Alarcon both found themselves in serious trouble because they were alleged to be nonresidents of their constituencies.
In addition, given that Cathedral city adopted Council districts under threat of litigation, appointing a Disctrict 3 resident, giving District 3 two representatives on the Council while depriving District 1 of any representation whatsoever would create a situation not merely of “taxation without representation,” but it would also open up the city to litigation under the California Voting Rights Act and possibly under Baker v. Carr (1962) 369 U.S. 186, in which the Supreme Court, in the first great “one person, one vote" decision of our recent history, struck down unequal representation and unequal constituencies. Though Henry’s candidacy is supported -and tainted- by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, her support of his candidacy demonstrates that Ms. Rosa has no understanding of either the requirements of the California Voting Rights Act, or of the law is the Supreme Court laid it down in Baker. Unfortunately, we must conclude that DeRosa’s support of Stan Henry’s candidacy is a crassly cynical political ploy, being undertaken for partisan purposes, presumably to undercut current Cathedral City Mayor Mark Carnevale.
Consequently, with a presumptively uninterested candidate and with a presumptively unqualified candidate, the city Council should not pursue the undemocratic expedient of an appointment. It should not presume to substitute the wisdom of five for the wisdom of thousands. Appointments might have been acceptable when the Council was elected at large. No more. In order to comply with the spirit and the letter of the California Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s clear instruction in Baker, the Council should call a special election as swiftly as is legally permissible.
If it does not, I expect that at least one resident of District 1 will put him- or herself forward as a plaintiff in a litigation to force a special election. That case may very well prove meritorious and expensive for the city and its ratepayers. The only legally correct course of action is to call a special election to fill the seat vacated by the untimely passing of the late Mayor Greg Pettis.
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Paul S. Marchand lives in Cathedral city and practices law in Rancho Mirage. He spent two terms as a member of the city Council when it was elected at large. He does not live in district 1 or in district 3, so he has no personal dog in this hunt. The views contained herein are his own.
