SMRR: the renters’ rights organization pulling the ropes
Santa Monicans For Renters’ Rights (SMRR) has doubled as a renters’ rights organization and the leading voting slate in Santa Monica for the past 40 years.
Art by Kayman Mangan
In 1978, the growth of Hollywood’s film industry sparked the Los Angeles Real Estate Boom, skyrocketing rent in Santa Monica. In response, SMRR was formed by tenants, neighborhood groups and local political organizations. By 1979, they had won passage of the strongest rent control law in the country and elected two members to the Santa Monica City Council. With this immediate and notable success, SMRR gained a reputation as a tenants’ rights champion, which translated to political power in a city where two thirds of people rent. Now a political machine, they were quickly able to position themselves as the power block of Santa Monica politics; the SMRR voting block did not lose an election until 2020.
To understand why SMRR lost in 2020, it is important to understand Santa Monica in the context of 2020. After years of increasing crime, homelessness and overspending, BLM protests— prompted by the death of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, among others—led to 400 arrested and Santa Monica’s promenade looted and destroyed. While SMRR did not directly cause the chaos, the incident was a culmination of the discontent locals had come to have with Santa Monica government. This gave way to centrist Democrats like Phil Brock, Oscar De La Torre and Christine Parra to run as law and order politicians under the Change Slate and secure the first non-SMRR victory in four decades.
So what now? Since 2020, Brock has been appointed mayor and Lana Negrette, a non-SMRR, Brock-endorsed politician won a seat on city council and was selected as mayor pro tem, establishing a true majority for the Change Slate. The non-SMRR majority has been unsuccessful in their hopes to stop over-development, homelessness and crime. To make matters worse, Parra is not seeking reelection, citing family issues.
This year, with four of the seven city council seats up for reelection, SMRR has a chance to regain the majority. A reason the renters rights group has been able to consolidate power and now possess an ability to regain power is because they are an established slate with employees and a farm team (a group of potential candidates to choose from each election cycle). Ellis Raskin, for example, is on the Steering Committee of SMRR as well as an endorsed candidate for city council.
The SMRR endorsement process starts with a candidate filling out an extensive questionnaire and attending a Zoom interview where they are asked questions by the Steering Committee and participating SMRR general members. These are used to gauge if candidates align with the slate’s ideologies about rent control, education and urban development, among other policies. Candidates’ filled out questionnaires and interviews are posted to the SMRR website where members can study them before voting for candidates at the annual membership convention. By vote of the membership at this meeting, candidates for city council, rent control board, school board and college board are endorsed by SMRR. Frank Gruber, SMRR member and journalist, attended the convention.
“At the SMRR convention on [June 22, 2024], everything came together. The SMRR leadership, still dominated by Baby Boomers, finally recognized the generational change happening in the city’s politics,” Gruber said.
This year SMRR made 12 endorsements. Four of which—Ellis Raskin, Dan Hall, Barry Snell and Natalya Zernitskaya—are candidates for city council. SMRR made three endorsements for Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education in Jennifer Smith, Jon Kean and Maria Leon-Vazquez. The renters’ rights organization gave three endorsements for Santa Monica College Board of Trustees as well: Anastasia Foster, Margaret Quiñones-Perez and Rob Rader. The SMRR endorsements for Rent Control Board are Kay Ambriz and Philis Dudick.