Meet Robin Rowe, Candidate For Beverly Hills City Council

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Robin Rowe is vying for one of three open seats on the Beverly Hills City Council.

Come June 7, voters will decide between 11 candidates including three incumbents: Bob Wunderlich, Lester Friedman and John Mirisch.

Candidates have faced off at multiple forums since their campaigns officially kicked off.

Learn more about Rowe's goals for Beverly Hills:

Age (as of Election Day)

62

Party Affiliation

PDA, Progressive Democrats of America

Family

Wife Gabrielle Pantera-Rowe is running for Beverly Hills City Treasurer.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

Former computer science professor, Naval Postgraduate School and University of Washington.

Occupation

Innovation Manager since 1996

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Mayor-appointed member of the City of Beverly Hills Technology Committee, since 2016.

Campaign website

robinsrowe.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

If elected I will oppose tax increases and cut Beverly Hills City spending waste.

Beverly Hills has the highest paid police force in America, and twice or three times as many police officers as nearby cities of the same size. Yet Beverly Hills crime rate is 71% higher than the national average. The Beverly Hills City Council knows how to spend more, not how to reduce crime. Using my experience implementing national security for the Department of Defense, I will prevent crime through smarter utilization of police and technology.

After the preventable Nessah synagogue break-in and vandalism in 2019, I briefed the Beverly Hills chief of police on the City Council’s public safety blunder. A city crew was in front of Nessah the next day installing cameras. The City Council had installed thousands of CCTV security cameras expecting that would increase safety, yet none of them pointed at our city’s many synagogues.

To decrease traffic and increase quality of life, I will build a public transportation skyway linking City Hall, the police station, the Hilton, businesses on Robertson and La Cienega Boulevard, and the two new Beverly Hills Metro subway stops about to open.

To save lives, I will clean up Beverly Hills air pollution. The Beverly Hills City Council says it has no idea what to do about air pollution, a chronic problem killing approximately five Beverly Hills residents a year through respiratory illnesses.

I will implement better fire safety. Climate change, unusually high winds and human error caused the California cities of Paradise, Ojai and Campfire to each burn down. A 2020 Beverly Hills Fire Department study warned the City Council that the same could happen here, and outlined the steps to prevent such a tragedy. The City Council instead developed a self-help preparedness guide that tells residents to shelter in place or to flee. The city is still in great danger.

For housing, I will build affordable housing for city workers. For the unhoused, I will find housing solutions that end the cruel practice of Beverly Hills confronting confused people who have nowhere safe to go, and deporting them to neighboring cities to end up camping on their sidewalks. The millions Beverly Hills spends on a private security force to drive unwanted people out of town can be better spent on actual solutions. And, we must address the issue that states lacking s healthcare system give substance abusers a one-way ticket here, expecting Beverly Hills to provide treatment. Beverly Hills is rich, but can’t support everyone in America who needs help.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Other candidates say that they are qualified to lead the city because they are a deeply concerned parent, a psychologist who really likes to listen, the child of holocaust survivors, or a MAGA organizer with insurrectionist friends. However, none of that prepares anyone for knowing what to do to solve the complex interlocking issues the city faces. These are not qualifications we should accept when choosing leaders to entrust with our lives as residents and who will oversee a $1 billion City budget ($250M operating, $750M investments).

Clueless officials can cover up their lack of knowledge by having the City hire expensive consultants to study issues for them and write reports. However, when eventually that report is presented, the City Council has lost interest, is onto the next crisis. Useless politicians keep repeating over and over again how concerned they are and making a show of effort, hoping for our sympathy vote.

When asked why crime is going up in Beverly Hills, the City Council says it's not their fault, that they recently increased the police budget by 14% on top of their previous increase of 40%. Their approach to managing the city is the same as for buying a designer handbag, just spend more.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Solving the complex infrastructure issues the City faces is far beyond the capabilities of the incumbents. City Council officeholders have been making silly blunders for the decade they've been in power. Watching the Beverly Hills City Council in action is like viewing a train wreck episode of CBS Undercover Boss, where the CEO of a business changes his name to get an ordinary job at his own company, and is so incapable of actually doing anything that his own employees judge him to be useless.

City Council officeholders say they're deeply concerned by the decline of quality of life in Beverly Hills. A decline that happened during their time in office. They say they sincerely mean well. Other challengers say they mean well too, and that being a concerned citizen they would do it better. With no experience solving infrastructure problems. Such candidates are ribbon-cutters seeking office for an ego boost and photo-op. Elect them at your peril.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Nearby cities of the same population size as Beverly Hills have much less police and much less crime.

Beverly Hills pays the highest police officer salary rate of any city in America. The City Council increased the police budget another 14% during this election cycle, acknowledging that their previous 40% police pay increase didn't do the trick.

City Council officeholders say public safety was the reason they passed a $5 million dollar police budget increase during this election cycle. They say the police force loves them, that otherwise police organizations wouldn’t be endorsing them for reelection. However, 10% of the police force has sued the City Council and received millions of dollars in settlements. Desperate to get themselves reelected, the incumbents use taxpayer dollars to increase police pay, buying the endorsements of the police union and fraternal organizations.

The incumbents, along with all of the other City Council candidates, are promising that by adding more police they will make us all feel safe. However, there is a point at which adding more police feels very unsafe. The public can resent the bullying intimidation that an overreaching police presence triggers. Nobody likes being confronted by police, maybe even having a gun pointed at them, simply for walking down their street. That can happen when government officeholders direct police to be aggressive, to presume anyone encountered is a dangerous criminal.

I'm for justice, science, compassion and personal sovereignty.

Because activists on the Left accuse me of being conservative, while those on the Right accuse me of being liberal, in some sense I’m a political moderate. However, I’m not a moderate in the middle-of-the-road corporate Democrat sense. What parties stand for has changed over time. If Abraham Lincoln was president today, I'd be with the Republicans and not the Democrats.

I believe in science and that people should have access to vaccines, but not in forcing people to take them. A person's health decisions should be her or his own. At the same time, I can support mask mandates when circumstances demand, because in a hundred years of surgeons wearing them, none seem harmed. Who would want to be operated upon by a surgeon not wearing a mask? Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) isn't like vaccines or medicines, that no matter how beneficial generally, do present a health risk of side effects for some people. And those health risks are different for each individual, depending upon allergies or other conditions. I believe in personalized medicine, not one size fits all.

The politics of the incumbents and other candidates for City Council ranges from proud Zionist on the Left to loud MAGA rally organizer on the Right. They have such opposing political views that they sometimes shout and call each other names at forums. And yet, all the candidates except for me say they want more police and the police to be more aggressive. Except for me, all of the candidates are authoritarians.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I understand how to implement public safety from my experience creating a Department of Defense AI crisis detection system installed at NORAD and other U.S. command centers to automatically alert leaders to danger in real time.

I understand healthcare and disaster management from being a UN World Health Organization group manager who designed a system to train doctors worldwide to save lives.

I understand finance. As chairman of the CFO Alliance cyber risks subcommittee, I defined best practices to keep America’s banks and manufacturers safe. While auditing a metropolitan hospital budget, I uncovered a million dollars in missing funds.

I understand people. I founded ScreenPlayLab, an industry association of 5,000 Hollywood producers and artists. For years I hosted weekly forums at on the lot at a film studio lot with Hollywood VIPs describing to an eager audience how they get ahead in the business. Using laptops donated by ScreenPlayLab members, I launched a Free Laptops Initiative to give free laptops to unhoused workers in Los Angeles so they can get jobs and also to the deaf in New York City.

Post COVID-19, ScreenPlayLab is no longer active. I still personally give laptops, no strings attached, to workers in need. There’s no non-profit organization. No application process. I don’t have the time to vet anyone asking me for a free laptop. What happens is someone who knows me calls to tell me they happen to know someone unhoused or impaired who can get back on her or his own feet if given a laptop.

One free laptop recipient gave the laptop back a month or so later. She had already made enough money to buy herself a laptop. Said thank you and to reuse the laptop she’d had, to give it to someone else in need. I’ve given dozens of free laptops to workers in need I’d never met before.

Political Action Committees

• Progressive Democrats of America member 2022
• Bend the Arc Immigration Justice Committee member (Jewish action organization)
• DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) North Star Caucus member 2022
• Elected DSA national convention delegate 2021
• DSA National Tech Committee member 2021
• Joined DSA, left Green Party after being advised to stop upsetting Party leaders by not agreeing with them all the time
• Green Party national elector 2020
• Elected Green Party SGA (Standing General Assembly) delegate 2020
• Elected Green Party Los Angeles County delegate 2020
• Elected Green Party EcoAction environmental committee 2020

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Nothing succeeds like success.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

My parents were environmental activist leaders in the organic foods movement starting in the 1950s. I grew up on my family's organic farm and horse ranch in central Illinois, in the "Land of Lincoln". I'm a vegetarian. I enjoy hiking and dancing. You may see me on my mountain bike cycling through Beverly Hills.