Mayor Calls Out Manhattan Beach Mayor Pro Tem For COVID TV Remark

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA — The Manhattan Beach City Council did not close The Strand for the upcoming July 4th weekend, however, Mayor Richard Montgomery did call out Mayor Pro Tem Suzanne Hadley's remarks made during a televised MSNBC interview. The City Council also did not discuss closing The Strand for the Fourth of July weekend at last night's regularly scheduled city council meeting so The Strand remains open.

Earlier in the day, Hadley stood on the Manhattan Beach Pier for a TV interview in which statements she made drew public outcry, with specific portions of her interview tweeted. "This is not the plague. I don't know anyone who has died of COVID. Maybe you do," she said in the tweeted clip as she addressed the interviewer. "We can prevent drunk driving by banning alcohol," she continued in another segment. "We can prevent car fatalities on the highway by closing our highways or preventing cars. The role of society is not to prevent death."

In the segment, but not included in the Tweet, Hadley also said, "I think everyone agrees on a few things. We agree that the young and healthy are least likely to get COVID, we agree COVID is least likely to be transmitted outdoors and we know that the beach is a wide-open space with lots of social distancing. To my mind, it does not make a lot of sense to close the beaches where the young and the healthy go to gather."

Her remarks were in response to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health closing all LA County beaches for the 4th of July weekend. The latest County order also requires all beach parking lots, beach bike paths, piers, and beach access points be closed beginning 12:01 a.m. Friday, July 3 and reopening at 5:01 a.m. on Monday, July 6.

After public outcry over Hadley's remarks, Montgomery took to social media. "The comment Mayor Pro Tem Suzanne Hadley made on MSNBC today is NOT a reflection of how I feel as Mayor of Manhattan Beach, nor does it reflect how the entire City Council feels on this subject. We are in the middle of a serious pandemic and are taking precautions to protect our communities health. The beach closure was NOT in Manhattan Beach's control, but we stand by the decision LA County Dept of Public Health made to prevent large gatherings and further increasing the spread of COVID-19."

In his biweekly "Coffee with the Mayor" series, Montgomery answered questions today (Wednesday, July 1) about Hadley's remarks. He informed participants (he holds his Coffees via Zoom) that normally the current mayor handles all media requests for interviews but he was in Orange County. Being mayor pro tem, Hadley was next in line to field the interview.

For her part, Hadley said she had "quite a long conversation with Erin McLaughlin [the interviewer]." She noted the piece is "highly edited and it is easy to take things out of context." She said in her conversation with McLaughlin, she was told they wanted her individual opinion. "I'm really not trying to speak for the City of Manhattan Beach. I'm not trying to speak for the nation." She noted that deaths in Manhattan Beach remain at 3. "Our deaths are very stable. The data is very strong. But when you double from a small base, it can be scary," she said of how the public may perceive the increase in positive COVID-19 tests in Manhattan Beach. She said data supports the coronavirus not being a "highly deadly" disease and that she disagrees with the closures Los Angeles County has instituted for beaches, beach parking lots, piers, and beach access points. She told Manhattan Beach Patch she misspoke once in what aired of her interview. "Early on [in the pandemic], we were worried it was highly contagious and highly deadly." She said COVID-19 has proven to be highly contagious but not "highly deadly."