With recent celebrations of the late Yogi Berra as a great ballplayer as well as a quipster, his semi-malapropism of “It’s like deja vu all over again” is regaining traction.
And that deja vu is precisely what crashed over me like a wave last week when former Pasadena Mayor Rick Cole called to tell me he was running for City Council again next year, four decades on from when he first did.
In District 2, the same Bungalow Heaven-centric neighborhood that he captured as a young buck in 1983 in a low-budget, high-energy campaign based on a simple tactic that smart candidates have adopted ever since then: He personally knocked on every door in the district. Every.
And he won, while still in his 20s, defeating one-term incumbent Stephen Acker, a moderate Republican who was doing a fine job but probably just didn’t know what hit him when Cole ran such an unusual campaign to get a seat on what had been a relatively sleepy City Council until then.
“What in the world!” I exclaimed to Rick, who I have known since I was a senior in high school, when he, who had graduated from Blair High two years earlier, was working as an aide to Pasadena’s genius, go-getter superintendent of schools, Ramon Cortines.
“Next thing you’re going to tell me is that Bill Paparian and Isaac Richard — now Isaac Haqq — are going to run again, too! That Don McIntyre is going to come back as city manager, followed by Phil Hawkey! They both still love Pasadena and City Hall politics! I mean, I’ve heard of ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia, but this is getting ridiculous!”
Rick had to just suffer through my incredulity, with a laugh. I was working out of town and on another line and hadn’t originally picked up when he called. He had to text me a photo of his Candidate Intention Statement to fully get my attention.
And then he sent a YouTube campaign video, which I recommend all San Gabriel Valley politicos check out at RickCole4Council.com as a masterful four minutes of brilliant propaganda — er, campaign advertising — that tugs at the heartstrings and makes a person want to serve on, well, city commissions or something. “I love Pasadena,” he says at the outset, strolling the Bungalow Heaven sidewalks, in the charming neighborhood he has recently returned to after serving as city manager of Azusa, and then Ventura and then Santa Monica — as well as deputy mayor of Los Angeles, and now chief deputy controller of that metropolis.
“In a changing world, cities can’t stand still,” he continues. “Pasadena used to be a leader, setting the example for other cities to follow. Yet today, city government has settled for the status quo. … City Hall seems to have forgotten that our General Plan says that community participation will be a permanent part of achieving a greater city.”
What Rick doesn’t note there is that he wrote those words into the General Plan when he was mayor, and then had them approved by Pasadena voters citywide.
It’s impossible not to bring in a personal note here, because I would likely not be writing these words, nor would I have had a 38-year and counting career in local journalism, absent a hire Rick once made. In 1984, fresh off a management master’s degree, I was working in a (low-level) job in New York City publishing. I came home to Pasadena for Christmas. Rick had just hatched the plan for the Pasadena Weekly, of which — while on the City Council — he was vice president. He asked me to interview for the paper’s business manager opening. I was hired. When, after a year’s time, it was clear that I was the world’s worst company accountant, he took me out to lunch at Fox’s Restaurant in Altadena and gently suggested I move over to the editorial side. I became a reporter, which I loved. Two years later, the Pasadena Star-News and then the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group hired me as editorial page editor.
As Rick is never shy about reminding reporters, he was a newspaper guy himself, and has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University.
Anyway, this is going to be fun. Local politics are a lot quieter now than in the era in which 20-something Rick jumped in and shook things up. Nearing 70, he’s issued a challenge to other local politicos to once again go big, to “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood,” in Daniel Burnham’s stirring words. Stay tuned for what are going to be interesting times in our area’s biggest City Hall.
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.
