Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights endorsed Mayor Caroline Torosis and Rent Control Board member Danny Ivanov for City Council at the group's annual convention Monday, Aug. 10, but left a third seat unresolved after no remaining candidate cleared the 55% threshold.

More than 175 SMRR members voted in person at Grant Elementary School Auditorium, the Santa Monica Lookout reported. Torosis locked up her endorsement in the first round. Ivanov secured his in the third round, after businessman Doug Trussler, a member of a rival slate led by Councilmember Lana Negrete, failed to win the 20% needed to advance.

Three candidates survived to the final round but fell short of the 55% required: Negrete herself, Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commissioner Angela Scott and Brett Morrow, chief communications officer for the LA County Department of Public Health.

SMRR's ten-member Steering Committee will now decide whether to endorse one of those three finalists. The committee has stepped in before. Unchanged after an uncontested internal election in November 2025, it endorsed all three council candidates in 2014 after members failed to make any endorsements at convention. It also backed candidates in 2012 and 2010.

A Steering Committee endorsement carries a technical distinction: candidates cannot call themselves "SMRR endorsed" on personal campaign literature, though their names and photos appear on the organization's own mailers with no asterisk.

The outcome follows a similar deadlock at the Santa Monica Democratic Club's July 15 endorsement convention, held via Zoom, where none of ten candidates reached 55%. Club President Jon Katz said at the time that the result reflected the group's broader membership. "It's a really broad coalition now. What we saw is non-consensus," Katz told the Lookout in July.

Together, SMRR and the Democratic Club hold a 6-to-1 supermajority on the current council. Three seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Incumbent Councilmember Jesse Zwick did not seek SMRR's endorsement and has not pulled nomination papers to run for re-election after taking a job as director of a housing advocacy group, a position that disqualified him from voting on housing issues.

No timeline has been announced for the Steering Committee's decision on a potential third endorsement.