Robert Melvin Wilkinson (April 11, 1921 – September 27, 2010) was a political figure and lobbyist in the San Fernando Valley in California.

The family moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1936, where Robert attended Canoga Park High School.

Trout-fishing trips that he organized for Valley politicians to Mammoth Lakes aroused controversy when it was found that the groups received free use of cabins owned by the city's independent Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Wilkinson successfully opposed a 1968 attempt by Mayor Sam Yorty to appoint Roger S. Hutchinson to the Library Commission after the councilman cited a series of Los Angeles Times articles that linked Hutchinson to conflicts of interest that occurred when he sat on the city's Board of Zoning Adjustment.

In 1970, he submitted a resolution, approved unanimously by the council, condemning "in the strongest terms the repressive, cruel and uncivilized treatment" of American and allied prisoners by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

As chairman of a Council committee investigating a 1968 protest against a speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which turned into the Century Plaza riot, Wilkinson said that "some undue force" was used by the officers but that "If some of the good citizens were handled rather roughly in the ensuing melee, probably they should blame the parade leaders rather than the police."

[12] After his first stint on the council, he was the executive secretary of the city's Harbor Commission for nearly nine years until, he said, he was ousted by Mayor Sam Yorty.

He sued four former Harbor commissioners, claiming they forced him out of the department in 1965 because he interfered with their "Illegal and unethical practices for their personal profit."

The defendants included former City Council member Karl L. Rundberg, who was facing jail after being convicted of bribery at the Harbor.

"[1][17] One of his clients was pop star Michael Jackson, who sought zoning variances for his Encino district estate on Hayvenhurst Avenue that would have allowed him to add a giraffe to his backyard zoo.

[18] Another client was the Islamic Center of Northridge, which needed planning and zoning permission to build the Valley's first mosque, in Granada Hills.