Residents Against Overdevelopment
Why Residents Should Vote for Ariel Rofeim
A second new candidate whom we believe is worthy of your vote for City Council is Ariel Rofeim. He made a spectacular stand-out impression at candidate forums as an exceptional young person who would make positive improvements to our city.
Ariel is a very magnetic speaker and an attorney who has engaged in litigation, which is very valuable, useful experience for serving on our council.
He is half Persian and half Ukranian and therefore fits well into our diverse city.
Ariel interned at the Obama White House and has seen all sides since he has been a Democrat, a Republican, and is now an Independent who does not support many of Trump’s actions. For some reason Peter Ostroff, in a recent Beverly Hills Weekly article labeled Ariel as "conservative". However Ariel does not share Ostroff's unsupported assumption.
Let us consider the pros and cons of Ariel's candidacy.
Most of us like to see that our candidates have experience of some kind in our city community work. It could any combination of serving on a city commission, completing Team Beverly Hills, attending and speaking at commission and council meetings, sending e-mails in to be read at council meetings, holding membership in a neighborhood group such as the Municipal League, Southwest Homeowners, etc., or writing letters to editors of our local newspapers. We like to see these things so we can get to know people and what they stand for, so they have an understanding of how our city works, and so we can feel they have paid their dues.
This year we happen to have a number of new candidates who have not been involved in much city work or community service.
In the past, we have elected exceptional people, even in the absence of city work and community service. One such person is John Mirisch who has been a brilliant council member, and has probably been more concerned with residents’ interests than any other council member. John Mirisch had not served on a commission or even completed Team Beverly Hills when he was first elected. In fact his position is that such community service is not a prerequisite to service on the council. Ariel, on the other hand, has completed Team Beverly Hills and is involved in mentoring at Beverly Hills High School.
Another consideration is that getting oneself appointed to one of the more important commissions, such as the Planning Commission, which is where we would expect to find attorneys, requires one to convince council majority members that one’s development views matches theirs. For a long time the council majority's views have been pro-over-development. So if an honest person stated during a Planning Commission interview that he or she really liked our existing three story commercial height limit, that person would not be appointed.
Ariel is clearly extremely bright and energetic and we believe he will be able to help fill a big hole which will be left on our council due to John Mirisch’s leaving. We even think Ariel would be able to help get some of our vacant storefronts filled.
Ariel is a member of CAALA, Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles, an organization comprised mainly of personal injury and civil rights attorneys. In vetting Ariel we received the following endorsement from another CAALA attorney member, the very reputable Arash Homampour, one of the best trial attorneys in California:
"I know Ariel through other younger Plaintiff attorneys and have hung out with him
socially a few times (one time meeting his father too.) I know he wants to get into
public service for all the right reasons: to help others and to be a unifying voice in a
polarized world. From my conversations with him (some very deep), he is very
competent, smart, charismatic and caring. His personally story is also very compelling
and interesting (Iranian dad and I believe Ukrainian mom.)”
Ariel has an impressive education having obtained his BA from UC Berkeley in Political Science and International Relations, and he having completed Brooklyn Law School in two years instead of three. In addition to his degrees, he took a several month international program at Cambridge in England, consisting of classes on English common law and international relations, earning a 4.0 grade point average. He also took an online course from Harvard Business School over a several month period, earning a certificate in Negotiation Mastery. A few residents are concerned that at times he has stated that he was educated at Cambridge or Harvard which made it sound like he earned a degree there. However we consider this puffing to be a minor issue.
Another concern was that at the Southwest Homeowners candidate forum, in the throws of doing his best to make a good impression, Ariel called out another candidate for not answering a question in a manner which seemed a little brash to some of us. Since that time he has apologized to the other candidate, as we would expect from a good, kind person.
We like that Ariel walked the city and counted the empty store fronts, and corrected the Chamber of Commerce’s minimized vacancy rate.
We applaud Ariel for refusing to meet with or accept donations from developers and for being outspoken about our city's failure of leadership in failing to meet the state's hosing element requirements over almost 3 years, resulting in the current catastrophic builder's remedy crisis.
Once a council member, Ariel intends, among other things, to preserve our community feel, enforce our height limits, and advocate on behalf of residents within the bounds of the law.
After the builder’s remedy catastrophe, we are ready for a renewed City Council and we are very excited about the idea of Ariel serving on it. Please vote for Ariel Rofeim, number 5 on page 1 of your ballot.
If anyone has any further questions of Ariel, he has indicated that they may contact him at ariel@rofeimlaw.com.
(Revised 5-23-26)