Mr. O’Day spent years on Santa Monica’s Planning Commission voting for every project big developers wanted. When he ran for City Council in 2006, developers poured money into his campaign. But Santa Monicans, knowing who was behind him, rejected Mr. O’Day and the traffic snarling growth he stood for.

So in 2008, Mr. O’Day took another assignment. He became the spokesperson for big developers in their campaign to defeat Proposition T.

Proposition T was the Santa Monica residents’ initiative to fight traffic. It would have placed some limits on the amount of new commercial growth allowed in our city, the type of growth that causes the most amount of traffic.

But developers didn’t want any limits on how much they could build, or how much of their traffic could spill into our neighborhoods.

So they asked Mr. O’Day to run their campaign to defeat the initiative that over 10,000 Santa Monicans helped get on the ballot. And under Mr. O’Day’s leadership, they spent over $800,000 (much of it out-of-state money) to mislead voters as to what Prop. T would do.

Outspent ten-to-one, Proposition T was defeated. Santa Monica currently has no limits on how much new commercial development can be built in our city.

And more development is coming. Lots more. Millions of square feet of new hotels, media centers, office buildings, you name it. And Terry O’Day will vote to approve all of it. He’s never opposed a big development in the past, why would he start now?

As his reward for defeating Prop T, the other developer-backed members of the City Council gave Mr. O’Day something he couldn’t win for himself; a seat on City Council.

But this November, we voters can tell developer candidates like Terry O’Day and Pam O’Connor that we’ve had enough unlimited growth and the traffic it brings.

We can send that message by voting for Ted Winterer and Kevin McKeown for election in the four-year Council seats. And voting for Susan Hartley for election in the two-year seat.

To make your vote even stronger, vote ONLY for those three candidates.

And send this message to five of your voting friends in Santa Monica, so they also can meet Terry O’Day.

If everyone who voted for Prop T (18,000 Santa Monicans) voted for these three candidates who supported Prop T, we would achieve the victory that developer money denied us before.

Please help us protect this city we all love.

SMCLC