By Doug Miller
Rob Tepper wants the public to know he is a hard-worker, a good attorney and an honest guy. Less well known is that he is Long Beach's first third-generation councilman.
It might have been a bigger story during the campaign: At just 33, Tepper, on Jan. 1, will follow his father, Roy, and grandfather George onto the City Council, where both were once president. Roy is now a Long Beach City Court judge, as George was.
George served on the City Council in the 1950s, until he earned a judicial appointment. He died in office in 1972. Roy was first elected in 1979, after winning a seven-way Democratic primary, and served until 1986, when he, too, was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Long Beach bench.
Rob will be sworn in by Roy, an opportunity the senior Tepper says he's beyond excited for. "Unfortunately, my dad never lived to see me [elected]," Roy Tepper said. "But I couldn't be prouder."
Rob will be legislating in a city that is very different even from the one Roy worked in in the 1980s. Many Long Beach families are double-income commuters who don't have the time to be as civicly involved as folks used to be. Many are recent arrivals who don't know the Tepper name or its legacy.
A member of Long Beach High's class of 1991, Rob guessed that most of his classmates have left town, as he eventually did. He went to Ohio State for two years, then transferred to SUNY-Buffalo, earning the equivalent of a pre-law degree. Police work intrigued him, so he moved back to Ohio and got accepted at a police academy, where he finished at the top of his class. He became a cop in a part-time department in Ohio for a few years before heading to law school. Along the way, he met his wife, Jenny.
Tepper finally wound up in law school, graduated, then came back to Long Island. He worked for Denis Dillon as a prosecutor for a few years, took a similar job for more money upstate, then came back for good for a job in the Nassau County attorney's office.
This year, he said, was the year he decided to give a campaign a try. While he grew up watching his father campaign, he said that nothing in his childhood prepared him for modern Long Beach politics. It's not that it's any more confrontational, Tepper said. It's just that people are harder to reach.
Rob was 7 when his father first ran. "He seemed very good at it," Rob said. "He seemed to me like he knew everybody in town and everybody knew him. He really had a handle on everything. He seemed very well-received by everybody, and had a real presence in the community. And that's also what people tell me about my grandfather."
In 1979, Roy ran on a coalition ticket with Democrat Harvey Weisenberg and Republican Bob Bergman. Weisenberg, now the region's assemblyman, has fond memories of serving with both Rob's father and grandfather. "I was a cop when George was a judge in Long Beach," Weisenberg, a former head of the Long Beach PBA, said. "We go back a long way."
People in Long Beach are still reachable, Weisenberg said, and suggested that any difficulty the Democrats have reaching the public can be traced to its organization. "Campaigns need to be coordinated, and I didn't see any of that [this year]," he said.
Roy said it was easier to get people together in decades past, to organize kaffee klatches in the high-rises or neighborhood community forums. But ultimately, he said, Rob won the way he and Weisenberg used to win. "He walked the streets for five months, knocking on doors," Roy said. "That is a much better way of making a connection, of personally asking someone for their vote. ... As far as having a known name, that only gets your foot in the door. Then you're on your own."
To hear one of his running mates tell it, Rob won because of his commitment to the city, not because of any legacy. "Rob Tepper made two issues his priority during our campaign, strong financial management for the city and more attention paid to our parks and playgrounds," said Councilman Leonard Remo. "Now, as councilman-elect, he can use his intelligent perspective to address these areas for the good of all the people of Long Beach."
