Glendale Citizens Need a Wake-Up Call

By: Jano Boghossian
JanoBoghossian@ucla.edu

On April 7th, 2009, the City of Glendale held it’s General Municipal Election, like it does every two years. Three out of the five council members’ terms had expired, so those seats were available for anyone willing to enter the race. There was also one position open for city treasurer, three for the Glendale Unified School District Board, and the Glendale Community College Board of Trustees.

Many Armenians who remember the result of the 2007 city elections hoped that the same pattern would not carry over to this election. Prior to the election, three of the five council members were Armenian, so we had the majority. Only one of the three Armenian candidate’s terms had ended, so only one seat was in jeopardy. During that election, four of the eight candidates were Armenian, while there were only two seats available. It’s a widely known fact that the majority of the population in Glendale is Armenian, and it’s also known that most Armenians will vote for anyone with a last name written on a ballot ending in “-ian.” Eventually, with the Armenian vote split, none of the four Armenian candidates received enough votes to win a seat on the city council. Only two Armenian council members remained.

These types of election results have been seen before. In the 1912 presidential election, the incumbent William Howard Taft was nominated by the Republican Party to run for re-election. Former president Theodore Roosevelt failed to win the Republican Party’s nomination for president, and he went on to create his own progressive party called “The Bull-Moose Party.” The third candidate running for office was Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who was considered by many to be the underdog in the election. With the majority of the conservative vote split between the incumbent and previous president, this paved the way for the Democratic Party’s first victory in 16 years.

Fast-forward to 2009, and the Glendale City Council only had two Armenian council members running for re-election. This time there were three seats available, and twelve people running for those three seats. One might think the Armenian population in Glendale would get together and unite to prevent another disaster from occurring. Unfortunately, no such thing happened. Of the twelve candidates running for office, seven of them were Armenian. Let me just repeat that one more time until it sinks in -- seven Armenians ran for three seats in city council, including the two incumbent council members.

The end result of the election was not shocking, but very disappointing -- only one of the incumbent Armenians was re-elected, and Laura Freidman and Frank Quintero won the two other seats in council. An even more embarrassing moment for Armenians was the defeat of Raffi Manoukian in the race for City Treasurer, since this time it was only one Armenian against the incumbent Ron Borucki.

The Armenian community in Glendale severely disappointed me this year. Armenians don’t understand the concept of uniting during elections. If we did, we could prevent the loss of another council member to a split vote. There is a reason why major American political parties hold national committees before the general election -- to unite the base of the party and gather all of the potential voters with the same ideology to vote for one candidate. Imagine the mess this country would have been in, if everyone from the primary elections kept their names on the ballot. The same thing has happened in Glendale for the past two elections -- no Armenians were willing to step down to give the position to another Armenian with a better chance of winning.

Armenians in Glendale need to deflate their egos and lost their pride for the benefit of the Armenian community. Just because the law gives you the right to run for office doesn’t mean everyone should run for the same position. Now some will argue that people shouldn’t vote for a candidate solely based on their ethnic background, but for the candidate that’s best qualified for the position. I agree, but when it comes to Armenian affairs in Glendale, and when the time comes for the city council to vote on a measure that could affect our community, we have to be sure that we can get our council members to vote in favor of us.

For the 2011 elections, there will only be two positions available for city council. This time, no Armenians’ seat will be in jeopardy, but in order to get the majority we need only two Armenians to run for city council. It’s up to the community leaders to organize some sort of committee to narrow down the Armenian candidates to just two, and it’s up to the politicians to put their pride aside and let the more qualified man run for office. There’s a proverb that says, “A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own.” Armenians in Glendale have made the same mistake twice in a row; the least we can do is learn from it.