Misi Tagaloa: ‘Love is the ideal’

Location: Admiral Kidd Park, 2125 Santa Fe Ave.

It’s a bright Tuesday morning at Admiral Kidd Park in West Long Beach and Misi Tagaloa has brought a friend with him to the interview. Terry Testo tells us about how he was homeless when he first met Tagaloa and with his support, was able to turn it around. He now drives a petroleum coke truck and credits Tagaloa, who is a senior pastor at Second Samoan Congregational Church UCC, with changing his life.

Testo gently remarks that Tagaloa is very soft spoken. And it’s true. At times during the interview, Tagaloa’s volume would approach near-whisper levels. It gives his speech a feeling of solemnity. Teasingly, Testo says Tagaloa needs a little help getting his message out.

Tagaloa’s politics are linked closely with his spirituality. He uses the lofty language of a pastor while discussing the concerns of the district. When recalling how West Long Beach residents expressed to him that “Downtown doesn’t care about us,” he says the incident was seared in his “soul.”

“I didn’t start off to be a pastor. My dad was a pastor. And so I knew what it’s like to be a pastor. And I said to myself, quietly, I’m not gonna be that … When he passed the community said ‘Hey, look, you’re it. You’re the next guy.’ And I fought it for three years. Then I started going to seminary, the Claremont (School of Theology),” he said.

Tagaloa, 54, is also the CEO of Canopy Communities, a nonprofit that owns, rehabilitates, and manages affordable housing and has worked as a real estate broker. He believes housing is a “fundamental right.” He’s lived in the district for 25 years and has been endorsed by the 6th District councilman Dee Andrews.

He describes policy he supports as being an “extension of (a) proclivity towards compassion and love.” “Love is the ideal,” he said when giving his position on rent stabilization. He invoked salvation when talking about public safety: “We need a miracle in the 1st district. Right now. We need some angels to come in and kind of help us out.” His faith drives him, he says, and is what keeps him motivated while running for a seat he’s lost twice before.

Tagaloa first ran for the seat in 2009 when, like this election, the seat was vacated by an official bound for the state legislature. Bonnie Lowenthal was elected to represent the 54th District in the State Assembly and her seat quickly became contested by two prominent Democrats: Evan Braude, who had held the seat previously, and Robert Garcia, an up-and-comer who would eventually become mayor. Unions and high-profile Democrats lined up on both sides, but Garcia ended up winning the race by a razor-thin margin of 186 votes. Tagaloa came in third with 141 votes.

In that campaign, Tagaloa, referred to himself as a “voice for the voiceless.” Homeless ministry was a significant part of his work at the church. There’s a campaign video from the period that depicts that work. But controversy erupted when, as reported by the Press-Telegram, the city clerk and city attorney opened an investigation into possible voter fraud concerning 290 voter registration forms.

Unhoused individuals were found to be registering within the district using addresses of homeless service providers, raising suspicions that they may not actually be residents of the 1^st District. It is perfectly legal for unhoused folks to use service providers as mailing addresses, thereby establishing residency in a particular district.

The locations included Second Samoan Congregational Church UCC, though, raising a few eyebrows. Two groups and one individual leading voter registration drives that included the questionable forms were connected with Tagaloa. The Press-Telegram, after an initial report, ran an editorial speculating that unhoused folks could prove to be an unlikely “swing vote” in the election which is historically marked by low voter turn-out. They even glibly referred to the 290 votes as a “homeless bonanza.”

“I’m not sure that article was fair,” said Tagaloa. “It was part of the strategy for increasing civic engagement. I don’t think we broke any rules. It just shocked the system that we were able to register that many people.”

Tagaloa ran again in 2014 after Garcia chose to run for the mayor’s seat instead of another term representing the 1st District. He was beaten by the district’s most recent councilmember, Lena Gonzalez, by 590 votes. Gonzalez is now a State Senator and Tagaloa is running for the 3rd time in a decade, securing his perennial candidate status.

“Well, I don’t know that I’m representing the the entire Samoan community, but the Samoans that I do talk to, they’re proud that I’ve taken this route again. So I guess it warms my heart, right. At the end of the day, when I let my hair down and go back home, I go back to my wife and kids, church.”

Outside of running for local office, Tagaloa has waded into other political issues. When Measure M, an initiative in Los Angeles County which levied a sales tax to fund transportation, came before the voters in 2016, Tagaloa held a press conference outside of his church to speak out against it. When asked about the position, Tagaloa says flatly that it was a “relationship piece.”

“I had a friend of mine call me up and say, ‘Hey, Misi, I wanted you to take a position on this.’ I say, ‘Okay, give me the talking points,’” he said, adding that he learned that the measure was “only going to trickle down to the communities like 40 or 50 years down the road.” Measure M passed overwhelmingly however.

Here’s Tagaloa:

There are serious health disparities between this district and other parts of the city. A big part of that is due to pollution. Are there any policies you’re excited to expand upon or bring to the City Council that would help improve the air quality?

We’ve been breathing this stuff for a long time. And no one has been bold enough to say, look, the buck stops here. You’re not doing that anymore. I think there’s enough technology to support that … I think we need a political leader. I’m less on the specifics because I don’t know the details, but really, no one should die from all that stuff. We live in the 21st century. We shouldn’t have a future that’s open and healthy and, and vibrant … People should be more important than profits and life ought to transcend death. And we’ve got this economy that’s displacing a lot of people and we need to stop killing folks.

Homelessness is a pretty big issue facing the 1st district. What are some of the solutions that you think can help alleviate homelessness?

Housing first is important, right? We just need to be committed to housing these people and we need to treat housing as a right. A fundamental right. If you have a pulse, if you can breathe, you’re semi-coherent, you deserve a place to sleep. At least a bed. Start there and then they work their way in. You build a relationship with them. They’ll fall off the wagon a couple times. Love works for me. We just need to do it in so many different ways at several layers so that people come to their senses and then they love themselves. And then after they love themselves, they love their neighbor. And then maybe they’ll learn to love God. And that’s the basis of our Christian faith.

How would you translate the idea that housing should be human right into a policy?

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Yeah, so I think the policy wonks will be able to put that together. Taking some of what we’ve known and codify it. So I mean, you don’t need a license to breathe air, right? I think housing should be part of that. Somebody has to come up and say look, you need a place to sleep. I don’t know, we legislate that you can’t sleep on the sidewalk. We have these facilities where you can take a shower. But I think what’s missing, because we’ve got the Multi-Service Center, a $35 million conglomerate, but it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do. We still have homeless people. What it’s missing is that compassion component, and I don’t know how to policy wonk that. I don’t know how to codify that or legislate that. That’s just something that that we have to do ourselves. And that’s why I think leadership is important because if we have a leader that has that proclivity, that tendency, then I think the policy will just flow from that.

The district has had very low voter turnout in previous City Council elections. What are you doing now and what would you do if elected to increase voter engagement and increase turnout? 

Our consultants are telling me that we need to go just to the high propensity voters, just focus on the fours and fives, right, don’t waste my time with the ones and the twos. The five and fours are those people that have voted four of the last five elections, five of the last five elections. So the higher the number, the higher the propensity that the person will vote, right? And the lower the number, the less propensity that you’ll vote. So consultants are saying don’t waste time on the ones and the twos. My strategy is to go after the ones and twos, the low propensity voters. Those folks that don’t come out the vote. And I think for someone like me, who’s an outside guy, that’s the only hope.

Do you support the upcoming ballot measure to make the Measure A sales tax permanent?

I support that, for this reason: If we don’t garner that part of the tax base, it will go to the county. Now I understand that people are concerned that there was a pretense when they originally put that thing on the ballot two years ago. But what are we going to do?

Is your campaign taking corporate contributions?

It depends on which corporation, right, that are funding it. I wouldn’t accept oil (industry) money knowingly. Right. Or tobacco (industry money) … Yeah. I mean, there’s no need for that.

How would you assess State Senator Lena Gonzales’s tenure as the 1st District Councilmember?

Well, we were working with her. She did the immigrant piece very well. I think that was good. Because again, it’s this proclivity towards compassion. So we were pushing at that she was a champion of that. I mean, the council is so busy, and I don’t I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the council meetings. But the other thing I think she she may not have done right is not rent control but (the tenant relocation assistance) piece.

How would you reduce crime in the district?

The best security, right is to know your neighbor. And that’s what we try to do; moving away from more of a very police focused sort of thinking on public safety, it’s more of a community approach … I would gravitate toward more of the community (policing) approach … I don’t know if funding more police officers will solve the problem. What we really need to look at is the return for the dollars we are spending on public safety and the police. Regardless of whether we have additional resources to pour into that, we need to figure out if these resources are deployed optimally.

Do you think police transparency is an issue for the city? If so, what would you do to address it were you to be elected?

I experienced the angst of the young people over the TigerTexting, but it never found legs. So, I don’t know why it didn’t have legs. Maybe they didn’t have the resources to pursue it. Maybe they didn’t have the policies. But the officers I spoke to say, well, we’ve been using it for years.

Some law enforcement agencies in Southern California have encrypted some or all of their police radio traffic, making it inaccessible to the public, including to reporters. The Long Beach Police Department maintains its public channels, but last year bought equipment that allows them to encrypt the signals. Would you support a move toward encryption?

As long as they’re using it as a tool for good, its fine. If they want to do that, then its part of their tool chest so they can fight crime … Ultimately they’ll have to go toward some kind of block chain technology to actually secure texting and email and all that stuff.

Do you think there should be more bike lanes in the district?

I haven’t taken a close look at that. I hear a lot of noise about how there are more accidents now than before. So we just need to look at the data … What we need to do is get somebody to stand in the corner, maybe we can employ some of the homeless people and give them a little stipend, counting cars, counting how many accidents are there in a given period of time and then you extrapolate that using engineering methodologies and come up with the real answer.

Would you support increasing funding for youth programming in the city?

Absolutely. And its not just the city but there are churches, there are faith groups, there are community groups with a vested interest in making sure that their kids are occupied. And they don’t need a whole lot to be incentivized. And all that stuff happens after hours and the weekends hen the government is closed. If we’re not interested in solving the problem it will continue as it is. We will have gang violence in the streets. Our youth will continue to be subjected to the school-to-prison pipeline.

How would you make the city more accessible for people with disabilities?

When we take care of the least (privileged) of our citizens everybody else’s lives improve. So when we take care of those issues then we’re getting better as a society. So I would advocate for that. It’s just a matter of getting money to fund those and then prioritize it.