Whether she is working in marketing or politics, Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin will always be an arts person.

Enriching the arts in Culver City is one of her biggest priorities in running for a seat on the Culver City Council this November. She worked as a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the city from 2016 to 2024 and argues that bringing in more places to practice and foster the arts is necessary for the growth of the city.

“Fourteen percent of Culver City’s population are in the creative field,” Stehlin told Westside Voice. ”It is really important to keep arts jobs here, especially with all the studios here.”

She met her husband — actor Jack Stehlin — in the lobby of a Hollywood Theater and has raised three kids in the 24 years the family has lived in Culver City. They ran a theater company together before COVID shut performances down worldwide, after which Stehlin pivoted to a desk job working as a marketing consultant. 

Her foray into politics is one that she is not unprepared for. While she hasn’t worked formally in the political space, Stehlin has volunteered for Democratic causes on both the national and local levels and co-founded the Heart of L.A. Democratic Club, which focuses on promoting the representation of women in politics.

But Stehlin still has a special place in her heart for the arts. She sees artists as “arts workers,” noting that it is important that these artists can support themselves financially while contributing to the city.

Putting artists in all levels of government is a movement she hopes to be a part of, arguing that a different mindset was required to lead governments to the future.

“Artists’ minds don’t contract, they expand,” Stehlin said. “Artists think creatively.”

Culver City has close to 100 pieces of permanent public art, and Stehlin believes in adding to that to beautify the city. She hoped to have art installed at the entrances of the city as a “welcome mat”, and believes that every project in the city should include an art component.

On top of arts venues, Stehlin believes that improvements to the city’s parks also need attention. One of her goals is to give every resident and neighborhood in the city access to parks no matter what mode of transportation one is using.

“It’s really important to me that we have parks and green spaces within walking distance of every neighborhood,” Stehlin said.

She also hopes that art can be more deeply integrated into the parks just as it is throughout the rest of the city, but she understands that residents should make the big choices. Stehlin preaches the importance of bringing decisions about parks to the people who use them.

“People in the neighborhoods should be able to see what might possibly happen in their park, and they can weigh in,” Stehlin said. “To me, that’s the beautiful community process.”

Small businesses are another important backbone of Culver City that Stehlin is looking to provide further support to. One of the ways she proposes supporting small business growth is to streamline the business application process, which she argues is slowed by a burdening paperwork process.

Stehlin herself has experienced how “cumbersome” the process to open a business in Culver City is, and while she understands having a stringent process to ensure businesses are opening for the right reasons, she believes the process could be made more efficient.

“I know our city workers are doing the best job they can,” Stehlin said, “but I would like to figure out how to build back the process to be better.”

Politics do not have to be a zero-sum game, but that is what she believes is happening with the conversation around mobility in the city. While Stehlin spoke in particular about crosswalks in the city needing improvements to ensure the safety of pedestrians, she believes that the needs of drivers should not be ignored in mobility discussions.

“We’ve been presented with false choices, like choosing between leaving people on the streets versus neighbors being able to walk safely in their neighborhood, or choosing between bikes, pedestrians, and automobiles,” Stehlin said. 

Memories of a union worker who was having trouble getting important equipment through Culver City come to Stehlin’s mind when she thinks about this balance. Speaking with him while they were working together at a garbage cleanup in Ballona Lane, Stehlin was asked about traffic in Downtown Culver City.

“He asked me about downtown and he said, ‘Cars are idling and I can’t get through,’” Stehlin recalled. “He can’t get his truck through there, and it’s hindering him, an environmentalist who needs to drive an automobile to get to work.”

These issues have brought significant confrontation to the city, but Stehlin argues that residents who disagree with each other on contentious issues like the MOVE Culver City project or the funding of the Culver City Police Department want the same thing.

“I would think that most people want safe paths for bikes, and want their kids to be able to go to school safely,” Stehlin said. “We’re fighting over the details, and we’re dehumanizing each other over details when we all want the exact same thing in the end.”

To help bring trust and accountability to the council deliberation process, Stehlin wants to institute a “lobby law” that would require that public commenters note any affiliations with relevant companies and entities before speaking.

“A citizen listening to a city council meeting should know that people who are speaking at the podium work for certain companies, and the reason why they’re advocating,” Stehlin said.

Another field where many residents still lack trust is policing. Stehlin acknowledges that the city “was not a friendly city for people to live in if you were a person of color or your car wasn’t the latest make and model,” but believes that the city’s police department has made many changes and improvements from that time.

“I think that they’ve been making a really concerted effort to become what they say: a progressive police department that is transparent and accountable,” Stehlin said. “Those are the things that we demand here in Culver City.”

Photo Courtesy of Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin.