Downey is lucky Claudia Frometa wants to run for re-election.

Nobody would blame her if she walked away. In four years on the city council, Frometa has had a front row seat to the degradation of our local government. At council meetings, she is routinely called names and cursed at. Gadflies hold profane signs calling her things we can’t reprint here. Her personal life was disrupted when the same group of knuckleheads showed up outside her home with bullhorns.

And for what? Having the courage to vote in the best interests of her constituents?

Downey is a different city than it was in 2018, when Frometa was first elected. Downey was a stable city with experienced department heads and a mature city council. The 2020 elections altered the course of Downey history forever. A new city council majority unilaterally decided to move Downey in a different direction; towards where, we don’t know. For what reasons, the council won’t say. They label it a time of transition for Downey but I call it chaos.

Downey is a mess despite Frometa’s best efforts. She fought valiantly to try to keep city manager Gilbert Livas. She recognized that forcing Livas into early retirement would trigger an exodus at city hall, and she was right. Decades of institutional knowledge was lost over the course of just a few months, leaving Downey floating with no vision or leadership.

Many times, Frometa was the lone voice of reason on the city council. She voted against making Catherine Alvarez – the subject of the first recall election in Downey history – the mayor pro tem, knowing it would cause more turmoil. She was right again. Frometa also is the only council member questioning why Fire Station No. 4 near Doty Middle School remains closed months after a small fire erupted at the station, despite millions of dollars spent to renovate the facility.

Frometa’s leadership abilities came into full view in 2020 and 2021, when Downey was in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic. Frometa voted in favor of reasonable eviction moratoriums that protected Downey renters and small business owners. She helped distribute food to the elderly, even when cameras were not there. She posted weekly informational videos on social media and made herself available to the press. In her day job, Frometa is an emergency management professional with Kaiser Permanente – Downey literally could not have had a better mayor at the time of the pandemic.

Downey needs Claudia Frometa on the city council if it has any chance of regaining its position as a respectable city in Los Angeles County. Let’s be clear: this is an election voters cannot mess up.

I hope District 4 voters do the right thing and give Claudia Frometa four more years.

Eric Pierce is editor of the Downey Patriot.