NEWS ANALYSIS : SMRR Seeks to Get Its House in Order : Politics: The longtime rent-control group is split between purists and pragmatists. The outcome of today’s convention could redefine the group’s mission--or lead to its decline as a force at City Hall.

SANTA MONICA —  After years of wrenching internal strife, the rent-control group that dominates Santa Monica city politics is hoping to attain peace--or at least avoid imploding--by redefining its mission.

The forum for the effort is the Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) annual convention today, at which members hope to craft a manifesto that will answer the question: What does SMRR stand for?

It’s a tough question any way you look at it.

The particulars of the platform will show which faction, the purists or the pragmatists, currently rules SMRR--or at least which faction got the most people to attend the convention.

Even more telling, however, will be the tone of the standard-setting process, which could be as contentious as the battles that have preceded it or fizzle from the ennui of an non-election year.

With internal bitterness so strong, and in some cases so personal, some members wonder privately if SMRR itself can come out alive and maintain its impressive record of pulling together when the chips are down.

The chips are down right now. Rent control’s most powerful legislative champion, State Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti (D-Van Nuys), faces forced retirement next year because of term limits. Apartment owners from throughout the state are expected to push vigorously for laws that limit the power of cities to impose strict rent controls.

At the same time, SMRR itself is at a crossroads, struggling with whether to recommit to a purist ‘60s-style philosophy or to adopt a modified, if still quite liberal, agenda geared to the ‘90s.

Mayor Judy Abdo, one of five people on the seven-member City Council elected with SMRR backing, said some people in the group’s inner circle are getting worked up over small matters when they should be focusing on the looming threat in Sacramento.

“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” Abdo said. “The general membership just doesn’t understand.”

In practice, however, the “this-is-the-downfall-of-rent-control” theme is played so often, and with such emotion, that it is hard to separate the true threats from the cries of wolf.

For example, a member of the city’s Rent Control Board wept at a recent SMRR steering committee meeting as she described how some of the SMRR City Council members were unfaithful to the cause. Their sin: They had decided to let a tiny one-room bootleg apartment be joined with another legal unit and sold as one condominium, instead of adhering to rent board policy of protecting the illegal unit for a renter.

In another recent instance, one of the SMRR-affiliated council members, angered that his colleagues disagreed with him on how many parking spaces should be required for new apartments, accused them of selling out rent control.

The true stakes go beyond the heartfelt philosophies and petty jealousies of the 100 to 200 stalwarts who will show up at John Muir Elementary School today to vote on what they believe in.

The larger and more problematic question is how their choices will play out to the city’s renters, many of whom routinely vote a straight SMRR ticket in local elections to protect their pocketbooks.

As a whole, rank-and-file renters are not otherwise involved in local politics unless something else gets their attention. In recent years, something has: public safety.

SMRR leaders have already recognized the importance of that issue. Several months before the 1992 election, for example, they orchestrated the firing of Robert M. Myers as city attorney. Myers was revered as the architect of the city’s tough rent-control law and its leading legal defender, but his well-known sympathies for the homeless and his unwillingness to take part in any crackdown that might infringe on their civil liberties made him a political liability.

If voters aren’t satisfied with the subsequent job the SMRR-dominated council has done, they have a chance to say so in next fall’s City Council elections, with three seats, two of them held by SMRR members, at stake.

It was Myers himself and some of his friends who initiated the SMRR soul-searching process. Soon after his firing, at last year’s convention, Myers circulated petitions calling for a resetting of the principles from which he thought the group had strayed.

That started a months-long series of sparsely attended meetings that Myers was not involved in. At each session, preliminary votes were taken on what items to bring to the membership today as potential planks in the new platform.

Many suspect the fervor of those caught up in Myers’ firing has dissipated over the year, but if the convention is poorly attended, it will not take many dissenters to create an uprising.

No matter which way it goes today, however, many leaders of the group say the process of getting to this point was beneficial.

SMRR steering committee member Don Girard said the process provided a forum for mending fences, nurturing new leaders and rekindling passion for the issue that binds them all together: strong rent control. “I think it’s real healthy,” Girard said.

When members come to the meeting today, they will see a laundry list of proposals. Some planks are as specific as what method should be used to measure traffic; others are as general and predictable as restating that the group’s primary goal is rent control.

Though keeping SMRR under a large philosophical umbrella would seem to make good political sense, there is also strong sentiment to set forth detailed positions on a multitude of issues.

For one thing, some in the group would like to rein in its five SMRR council members, who not only don’t vote as a bloc, but in some cases openly quarrel on the dais.

If a new platform passes, future candidates seeking SMRR’s all-important endorsement would be given a rather detailed test to see if they adhere sufficiently to the agenda to warrant a spot on the SMRR slate.

SMRR co-chair Nancy Greenstein, citing the long list of issues, said not everything will be accomplished today.

Development and homeless-related issues are certain to be among the contentious topics. Some SMRR members will call for the repeal of controversial laws aimed at the homeless. Ultra-slow-growth forces are also deeply involved in trying to get SMRR to take staunch anti-development positions.

At the outset of the process to rewrite SMRR’s platform, many of the longtime leaders of the group quietly predicted that the effort would yield a lot of rhetoric and then quietly run its course, as the political pragmatists with a broader world view prevailed.

In that scenario, people would have their say, and then a broad set of principles would be adopted that most of them could live with.

That’s what Mayor Abdo thinks should happen.

“It’s a good idea for SMRR to have a platform based on broad principles,” she said. “The specific things don’t have a lot of meaning when the process plays itself out.” Besides, she said, “No one could agree with all of them.”

But for the anti-development crowd, Sunday may prove to be a sort of last stand, at which they could prevail if enough of the right people show up. It is the infusion of these new members, who want the backing of the group to push an agenda other than rent control, that is the wild card in the deck.

“People in general want to use SMRR because they consider it powerful,” said longtime activist Steve Alpert.

Alpert predicted, however, that any effort to keep the group’s five council members on a short leash is doomed to fail.

“SMRR does not control the City Council (members), and it never will,” he said.