Now that we have a wild Santa Clarita city election going on, I would like to ask my fellow commentators a professional question.  Can we try to keep up with the wild and animated nature of our local politics with commentary that is equally wild and animated?  And isn’t now the best time to take up the example of the great French painter Henri Rousseau, who animated his canvasses with the wildest animals to show what life was becoming like toward the blowsy 20^th Century?  

As I have always told my students, a sentence is only as exciting as its words.  I have never thought that big words were at all exciting –have you noticed that in my commentaries and stories I have avoided big words like the plague?  But I have always gotten pleasure from hearing or reading the “ine” words.  It’s because I like animals and “ine” words are literally a vocabulary tropical jungle. 

The “ine” words describe animal manners.  They use the “ine” which means “like” as a suffix to adjust an ancient root word about other living beings.  For today’s column about Santa Clarita Politics, I will use seven of what I think are the most attractive “ine” words to explain what I think has been happening in the Santa Clarita political scene, with some illustrations by the late Henri Rousseau.  These “ine” words are aquiline, bovine, canine, equine, leonine, rodentine, and tigerine – each describes a distinct animal’s code of manners. 

Aquiline: You might not guess it, but “aquiline” means “eagle-like,” from the Latin “aquila.” It has been used extensively to refer to the eagle’s legendary visual powers of seeing prey habitats sometimes thousands of feet below them as they soar over their ranges. 

In Santa Clarita politics, I would like to give aquiline credit to one of my political favorites, Assemblyman and former Santa Clarita City Councilman Cameron Smyth.  Years before a campaign against child obesity was being made fashionable by First Lady Michelle Obama,  Smyth was battling the causes of this growing American tragedy by papers he was drawing up in the in the California State Assembly.  When he was City Councilman, Smyth also put himself into the thankless but crucial task of lowering the comfort level of Santa Clarita city contracts with his efforts in widening the bidding for the city’s garbage collection contracts. 

Again and again, Cameron Smyth has used aquiline vision to head off looming disasters. 

Bovine:  It think it must be very nice to be bovine, or in the lay version of the word, cow-like.  One of great benefits of bovine behavior is the grazing of grass, keeping grass from growing wild and instead converting it into the Vitamin D fortifications of cow’s milk. 

Bovine grazing can be comparable to hours of moving – moo-ving –  around golf courses.  Surely Santa Clarita Councilman Bob Kellar and City Manager Ken Pulskamp must be given credit for doing on golf grass what cows do on field grass. As a golfing pair, Mr. Kellar and Mr. Pulskamp must have already compiled many collective weeks of stomping out with their golf shoes the possibility of any golf green in Santa Clarita from running amok.  They are a bovine blessing to every local golf course. 

Canine: Everyone knows what “canine” means, and for anyone who has ever had a dog, it is known that the greatest aspect of being canine is the loyalty that comes with it.  You can lock a dog out in the coldest weather and it will stay loyal to the family, just as the little dog in the Rousseau wedding picture will stay loyal no matter what. 

Long-time Newhall Water District Director Maria Gutzeit has a loyalty to her community in the same way as the proverbial little dog locked out in the cold.  In the last City Council election, in which Maria ran as a losing candidate, she only earned about half the votes she has usually won when she has run for the Water Board.  I can only account for that Maria’s forthright canine spirit.  Her basic candor made her identify herself as a Democrat on the City Hall ballot. 

I truly believe that if Ms. Gutzeit had not identified herself with any political label – or just fibbed and said she was a Republican at heart – she might have won a City Council seat.  She surely has already rendered about twice as much service to the Valley as did top vote getter Laurie Enders, even with all of newcomer Laurie’s volunteer work with the local schools.  

But the trouble with running as a Democrat in Santa Clarita is that only the Republicans diligently vote here.  On Election Day, most Santa Clarita Democrats instead of voting are more likely to be found drinking enormous quantities of beer. By the time their hangovers run their course, the local Democrats are reading about the election results the next day. 

However, even after being so insensitively locked out in the cold, Maria Gutzeit with her beautiful quality of canine service still protects the local water and does what she can to help the Valley’s seniors any way that she can. 

Equine: You can best remember that “equine” means being horse-like if you associate the word with all of the “equestrian” events say at the Don-E-Brook farm at San Francisquito Canyon.  If you have been around horses at all, you will never forget a horse’s laugh or its yelping. 

But occasionally human beings will also laugh like horses.  I think the last time I broke out with an equine laugh was when I read in the West Ranch Beacon that before perennial Santa Clarita Democrat Bruce McFarland settled into a political career, he was a member of the Hare Krishna church.  I do not begrudge Mr. McFarland’s peaceful religious choices in our choice land of religious freedom.   

But the report made me wonder why Mr. McFarland cannot continue with what looks like pleasant Hare Krishna dancing and singing routines in airports here and there now that he is a senior citizen.  There is surely something unjust in any culture or church that puts a senior citizen out to pasture and leaves him to hang as a beleaguered Santa Clarita Democrat.  It is things going wrong that make me laugh like a horse. 

Leonine: In ancient Greece, fathers with long hopes for their sons would name their sons “Leonides,” or Lion-Hearted, to embolden them for any uncertain future.  At the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartan King Leonides certainly lived up to his name by stopping King Xerxes and his huge Persian army by bottling them up at a narrow mountain pass and ambushing each emerging Persian soldier one by one. 

The word “leonine” survives for those today who act lion-like.  I have to think here of Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who in his lion-like way will wake Santa Clarita up when the City Council threatens to do something incredibly stupid. 

One such incredibly stupid thing happened a few years ago when the local City Council settled on a novel solution to the homeless in Santa Clarita – bus them all to Sylmar, apparently because it was decided Sylmar was a homeless-enough looking enough town for them. Antonovich once again was forced to exert his authority as king of the jungle to save Santa Clarita from becoming a laughing stock of the state.  He simply prepared county property for the local homeless during the winter season. 

A lion can move slowly and simply and still stop a lot of nonsense by hyenas, as has leonine Michael Antonovich on many an occasion. 

Rodentine: Anyone knows that one of the most effective qualities of a rodent is to hide in almost any environment.  On city hall election days in Santa Clarita, the city manages to hide the election like no other city can.  Santa Clarita truly has a rodentine genius for hiding places to vote with the result that it creates perhaps the smallest voting turnout of any similarly-sized city in America. 

The advantage of this to any incumbent is that it takes the last-minute independents practically out of the picture, leaving the voting to packs of candidate backers who vote as fast as they can by mail.  In this system, with its rodentine hiding of election day and elimination of any last-minute decision-making, Santa Clarita political incumbents have been practically insured of lifetime tenure. 

Tigerine: The last time Laurene Weste defended her city council seat, there were many signs that an inconceivable thing was happening – an incumbent in Santa Clarita might actually lose a political election.  Ms. Weste decided to turn that around by wearing tiger stripes in public. Not just that, but she wore the American flag – its stars as well as its stripes – in public to show her patriotism to Santa Clarita voters. 

How refreshing it would be if a City Council candidate could express patriotism in some other way than to associate the American flag with their political signs and their clothes.  How about meeting with some local soldiers who came back from their wars, for example, or going to the Christ Lutheran Church in Valencia and helping with its packages to American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq? 

In any case, a tigerine Ms. Weste in bright stars and bright stripes wore her American flag to another victory, wooing voters who feel that all it takes to be an American patriot these days is to use our flag to get votes.  
 

Chris Sharp- Commentary

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.