The four candidates for Pasadena’s top elected post squared off in a forum Sunday night at one the city’s oldest black churches, where they tackled a slew of the city’s issues, from affordable housing and homeless to mass transit, traffic and development.

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena from left, Victor Gordo, Jason Hardin, Terry Tornek and Major Williams fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

Pasadena mayor candidate, Victor Gordo, during forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Jason Hardin, during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Terry Tornek, during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)



Pasadena mayor candidate, Major Williams, center, during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)



Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Major Williams, center, speaks with audience members following a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Jason Hardin, left, speaks with Joe Wilson, 76, of Pasadena following a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Victor Gordo, left, speaks with Brenda Goldstein, 55, of Pasadena following a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)



Naja Benson, 31, of Pasadena speaks to Pasadena mayor candidate, Major Williams, right, following a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Major Williams, during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Candidates vying for the mayoral position for Pasadena fielded questions in front of voters during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

Pasadena mayor candidate, Terry Tornek, center, during a forum at Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2020. The forum was co-sponsored by the Pasadena Star News and hosted by Friendship Baptist Church. (Photo by Trevor Stamp, Contributing Photographer)

With the March 3 election nearing, there was a sense of urgency in the air at Friendship Pasadena Church, where the pews were packed with voters to hear Pasadena Councilman Victor Gordo, entrepreneur Jason Hardin, incumbent Mayor Terry Tornek and marketing director Major Williams make their cases for who should be the city’s next mayor.

A replay of the forum is available here.

Going into the evening, front-runners, Gordo and Tornek had a lock on name awareness, both with track records at the city’s highest elected levels. But a question was, could Hardin or Williams make a meaningful impact in the closing weeks of the race — enough to make voters take a second look — and could any of them find daylight between their proposed solutions and Tornek’s record as mayor.

Challengers on the offense

Williams wasted little time chiding City Hall for a lack of action, making a push to define himself as a can-do and “creative” contender.

“As if this is an issue that just started here in Pasadena,” he said, chiding Tornek on “rhetoric” about the problem of homelessness. “… At what point do you get something done so we’re not at this point during the next election cycle waving a flag in regards to this is what we’re going to do?”

Co-founder of Eye Heart Art and a supporter of President Donald Trump, Williams said stronger leadership at City Hall should be coupled with efforts to provide help for unjustly evicted tenants and seeking re-usable land for affordable housing.

Williams said in his first 100 days as mayor he would organize financial literacy and credit repair programs for residents, repurpose city funds for people with special economic hardships and present the city’s budget in a transparent and real-time way on the city’s website.

Hardin, who is on his second run for mayor, played up his community roots while striking a defiant chord toward City Hall bureaucracy.

“I’m not here to represent the the city of Pasadena. I’m here to represent the people of Pasadena,” he said, arguing the city is in a race against time to preserve what is great about it while also adapting to the new issues confronting it.

For Hardin, that means “not treating homeless people like criminals,” supporting motel conversions into supportive housing, vacancy taxes and creating an affordable housing commission, more mass transit — and for leaders to take mass transit more — rent control and a more socially equitable cannabis ordinance, he said.

Hardin prompted a spattering of cheers from the audience when in response to a question, he said the city should “get to the bottom of what happened” in the abrupt reassignment of Chief Bertral Washington, who was recently given a new position in City Manager Steve Mermell’s office amidst a long-running feud with union leaders.

And while all agreed that the 710 stub is ripe for economic development, Hardin sparked applause again as he put the prospect of developing the stub in the context of a chance to empower black neighborhoods in the city.

Gordo, Tornek jostle

But while Hardin and Williams made valiant efforts to chisel away at the front-runners, the Gordo vs.Tornek battle underpinned the forum, where despite common ground on issues, it was clear there were ideological differences on some big-ticket items between them.

For example, on Washington’s reassignment, both acknowledged city personnel privacy rights make it difficult to fully “get to the bottom” of what happened. But for Gordo, the process could have been handled differently. For Tornek? It was “probably handled as best it could be,” he said, adding it was a “dangerous thing for elected officials to meddle” in that process.

Both agreed on encouraging and incentivizing more use of public transit, but it was a chance for Gordo to push for Pasadena’s involvement in regional transit planning, to advocate for more transit resources and dollars.

“It’s one thing to work with Metro and Foothill Transit, but shouldn’t we be working with all the cities around us?” Gordo asked.

Gordo said the city should be working on transit planning with the 30 member cities of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. He has continually harped on Tornek’s role in withdrawing Pasadena from the quasi-governmental body.

“Pasadena is the one city that is missing. I objected to it. It was pushed through. But we should be working with our neighbors. All of the cities of the San Gabriel Valley should be present, including the Crown of the Valley. And I intend to ask the council to change that. When our incumbent took us out it was wrong, and it’s wrong today.”

The rifts widened as the conversation turned to homelessness, affordable housing and cannabis.

There was general agreement among all candidates about ways to increase supportive housing stock and measures to get people off the street: using city-owned and school and church properties for homeless housing; increasing the required threshold for affordable housing on new developments; motel conversions; mental health intervention efforts.

But Gordo chimed in again over the lack of Pasadena’s involvement in a San Gabriel Valley-wide effort to deal with the issue, to leverage resources for homeless help. Gordo also used the moment to tout success in his district, where he said six of the city’s last seven affordable housing projects have been built.

Responding to Gordo’s and Williams’ challenges on the issue, Tornek shot back, adding that the city has made gains in dealing with homelessness, including taking hundreds off the street and allocating more than $1 million for 64 Salvation Army project units on Walnut Street.

“We haven’t just been about ideas,” he said. “We’ve been taking serious action on the homeless front. We’ve been acting on it and having some success.”

Gordo and Tornek did find some common ground on police oversight, which they both agreed should be left up to the city’s Public Safety Committee.

Hardin was for more oversight, creating something more akin to a civilian oversight commission with subpoena power.

The lot on pot

There was even less consensus among the candidates when it came to the city’s controversial cannabis ordinance, 2018’s Measure CC, which allows for as many as six dispensaries in the city — although several candidates agreed this was not as pressing an issue as others raised throughout the forum.

Currently, only two companies have secured a permit guaranteeing a location, despite a series of lawsuits and appeals challenging the city’s handling of the process. The two chosen ones are still months away from securing a nearly half-dozen other permits required to sell marijuana in Pasadena.

“It’s not fair, it’s not inclusive,” Hardin said, who said the city should start from scratch and create a new process, one that would have a stronger social equity component.

“We missed the mark,” Gordo said, coming out stronger against the city’s cannabis process than ever before, calling it “a mess.” He said he’d be open to rebooting the entire process.

Tornek acknowledged the ordinance in place and the efforts to implement it were “imperfect,” but he was not in favor of starting over.

Williams said the issue hasn’t been a topic of interest among the constituents he has been talking to, but added that the ordinance should be equitable.

The forum itself — presented by the Pasadena Community Coalition, the Conversation Live and the Pasadena Star-News — was well-attended, with more than a hundred people in the audience.

Among them was Carla Boykin of Pasadena. While she had been considering voting for Tornek or Gordo, the forum brought Hardin to her attention for the first time.

Residents said affordable housing was among the top issues in a city many of them have spent decades in. They were concerned the Pasadena they once knew was changing because of those high costs.

Brenda Goldstein of Pasadena said the forum was helpful. But she would have liked to have seen a woman in the race, so that it wasn’t just “men talking at us.”