Rick Tuttle

Rick Tuttle (born January 5, 1940) is an American politician, university administrator and educator from Los Angeles, California.

Early life Rick Tuttle was born in New Haven, Connecticut, one of four children of Frederick Burton Tuttle and his wife, Mary Emily. His father was a descendant of a longtime New England family that originally settled in New Haven in 1638. His mother's family came from Arkansas. Due to his father's service in the U.S. Marine Corps, the family moved to Arkansas, then back to Connecticut and afterwards to Rhode Island before finally settling in Plattsburgh, New York, where he graduated high school.

In civilian life, Frederick, Tuttle's father, was a high school track coach before becoming a school principal in a predominantly African-American New Haven neighborhood. He was also a member of the NAACP, and his involvement in civic affairs made a strong impression on his son.

Education Tuttle received a Ph.D. in 1975 and an M.A. in history in 1964 from UCLA, as well as a B.A. in history, with honors and distinction, from Wesleyan University in 1962. He worked his way through college by working on various jobs, including at construction sites and as a farm hand.

While an undergraduate at Wesleyan, Tuttle was a member of the university's Civil Rights Committee. Raised as an Episcopalian and Methodist, he served as president of its Alpha Chi Rho chapter and led a campaign to end what was then the fraternity's official policy of restricting membership to Christians. He was ultimately released by a local judge after a prominent Savannah physician offered his property as bond in exchange for Tuttle's agreement to leave the county.

By the end of his first term he had earned a reputation for fiscal responsibility.

In a 1989 editorial endorsing his first re-election bid, The Los Angeles Times stated:

And when he retired from public service, a Times columnist wrote:

Like a government paycheck, Tuttle's headlines have always been modest but steady. He embraced the Watergate admonition to 'follow the money,' practicing activism with a pencil and calculator and audit power. He has cracked the City Council's knuckles over its favorite pork. He got mandatory audits written into the new City Charter, crafted civil rights rules forcing downtown private men's clubs to integrate, and refused to pay for lavish dinner tabs, yoga classes and a $2,800 chartered jet flight to Sacramento by a former DWP chief, the last 'the worst [official] extravagance I've ever seen.' and succeeded Berman and Waxman as statewide president of the California Federation of Young Democrats.

He had briefly considered returning to elected office in 2009 by running for the open Los Angeles City Council District 5 seat to replace the retiring Jack Weiss, but threw his support to Ron Galperin instead.

Tuttle also served as a director of the Los Angeles West Chamber of Commerce

Awards Tuttle is a recipient of the Equal Justice in Government Award of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Distinguished Public Service Award of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Anti-Defamation League, the Lifetime Membership Award of the Los Angeles Business Council, the UCLA Alumni Public Service Award, and the Distinguished Leadership Award for 1996 presented by the Association of Government Accountants. He received the Los Angeles Employee of the Year Award in 1997 from the All City Employees Benefits Service Association (ACEBSA).

In 2008, Tuttle married Rebecca Rona, a professional writer and social, environmental and political activist. She founded the grassroots organization Together, which for a decade promoted human relations and understanding; worked to end fracking and oil extraction in the Inglewood Oil Field, and has been the driving force behind an effort to convince Culver City to form the Culver City Equity and Human Relations Committee. In 2018, she was honored by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party with the Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt Award as Democrat of the Year for her Assembly District. Currently she serves as communications director of South Los Angeles Health Projects.

In his spare time Tuttle is an avid basketball fan and, by 2002, was the second-oldest full-court basketball player in Los Angeles.