I have studied the Coronado Election Compendium found on the City's website, and the results are fascinating. Casey Tanaka lost his first bid for City Council in 2000, but in each subsequent election in which he was running for City Council and his two terms for Mayor, he won in a landslide. It is fair to say that Casey Tanaka loves Coronado, and Coronado loves Casey Tanaka.
My reasons for liking Tanaka are not necessarily issue or policy based. I feel like Tanaka is a known commodity. He is local -- in fact he grew up a block away from me as my mom lived on the 600 block of H Ave. and Casey lived on the 700 block of H Ave. Tanaka's campaigns are nonpartisan (i.e., he does not seek a partisan endorsement), which I feel is best for Coronado as our local offices for City Council and Mayor are "nonpartisan offices," and we don't want outside interests deciding what is best for Coronado. I love that Tanaka was born in Honolulu and spent his early childhood on the island of O'ahu, Hawaii, and brings an Aloha Spirit to City Council. My wife also grew up on O'ahu in Hawaii, we were married there 15 years ago, and we love Tanaka's aloha shirts, slippahs (aka "flip flops") and love for all things Hawaiian including plate lunch and plumerias. I love Casey's sense of humor... his food posts are my favorite. Casey is extremely engaging, personable, and an excellent orator... it is often said that as Mayor he directed the best City Council meetings we've ever had in Coronado. Casey is a history teacher at CHS, and he is extremely knowledgeable about not only world history, but Coronado's history.
What I like most about Casey, is that he listens to his constituents.. he respects his constituents... and whether you agree or not with his votes on the dais, he always strives to do what he believes is the right thing for Coronado. I'll tell you a quick story about my first and only experience dealing with Tanaka while he was Mayor. It was October of 2016, Casey was about to term out, and the Silver Strand traffic had become horrendous... the commute from the Cays to town was 45 minutes, and my wife said she didn't sign up for this and wanted to move away from the Cays if the traffic wasn't fixed, as it took her 45 minutes to take the kids to school in the mornings which was worse than the traffic in Hollywood where we had moved from. I told my wife we aren't moving -- I'm going to fix the traffic, and I picketed the Silver Strand in the mornings and asked Casey for help. Casey's initial response was that SR-75 is owned by CalTrans, and there wasn't much City of Coronado could do. I told Casey as the traffic lights in front of NAB were not synchronized and causing massive traffic backups, they were essentially broken, and when you have a broken traffic light, you get a police officer or traffic guard to direct traffic. Casey listened... and he later told me he used my language "verbatim" with CalTrans to get them to approve traffic guards in front of NAB until adaptive signals were installed... the traffic was immediately fixed with the traffic guards, thanks to Casey's ability to listen to his constituents.
I started the Facebook group Coronado Electorate (CE) on January 2nd, 2017, just after Casey left office as Mayor. Casey has been perhaps the most engaged member of CE, answering questions for residents and sharing his impressive knowledge of how our City works. You can bet that Casey has been paying close attention to how his constituents feel on local civic topics during the last 4 years. I realized just how closely he is paying attention yesterday when he answered a candidate forum question about transborder sewage at the Facebook group The 92118, and he said the City of Coronado should have joined IB's lawsuit against the IBWC... and his reasoning was logical. That's another reason I like Casey... you can always appeal to Casey with logic, and he will listen and can be persuaded to a logical point of view.
I am looking forward to voting for Casey Tanaka and Tim Rohan for City Council this November.
Daron A. Case, Esq.
P.S., if you have not already done so, check out Casey Tanaka's presentation to the Coronado Historical Association on Dec. 16th, 2016, where he provides an insightful and humorous presentation about every elected official he served with on the dais during his tenure on Council.
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