Mail Call

More reader mail from one of our favorite correspondents:

Hi Claremont Insiders--

Thanks for printing my note to you earlier, and for answering my question. It seems fair to me that you don't allow comments. It's your blog, after all, and you're paying for it. You get to do what you want with it.

You were willing to tolerate one message from me, so I'll try another and see what happens.I'm still trying to figure out your views about city staff and elections. I understand that like you, City Council incumbents Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay were angry that the city attorney responded to non-incumbent candidate Linda Elderkin's questions about conflict of interest rules. I'm told that Jackie and Corey demanded that city staff tell them everything that they had said to Linda.But I remember Jackie demanding and getting all kinds of attention from city staff before she was elected to the city council. I thought Jackie wanted city staff to cooperate with the public and with people running for city council. I thought she wanted to make sure that we know what city policy and the law are before we go running off and jumping to conclusions.

I'm also confused about what you think Linda Elderkin should have done about your conflict of interest charge. You attacked her for not having good legal information about city rules, and then you attacked her for seeking good legal information from the city about their rules. Heads you win, tails she loses.

Finally, I'm trying to figure out why you say Councilwoman McHenry is an "outsider," when her faction has been is in control of the City Council for four years. Sounds like the George Bush supporters who think he is a persecuted outsider fighting against some evil "liberal" establishment that supposedly runs America. I don't get it.

Thanks for listening. And thanks for the piece on the Press. Great place.

Cheers

Last things first: Glad you liked the bit on the Press, and cheers to you.

As to McHenry's outsider status, if you look back to when she was first elected in 2003, she was considered by the Claremont 400 to be a gadfly, a busybody, someone who had no business running for council. As the reader pointed out, that was four years ago, but the reader is incorrect in believing that McHenry controlled a faction that ran the council for that period.

Look at who comprised that 2003 council: McHenry, Yao, Llewellyn Miller, Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado. Miller, who was elected in 2001 as something of an outsider, had by then been co-opted by the 400, something that led to his defeat in 2005. Yao could at best be considered someone independent of both the 400 and McHenry, as the Daily Bulletin pointed out. However, Yao strikes us as more of 400 candidate than as a true independent. On many issues his inaction has served as a de facto 400 vote, and Helaine Goldwater appears on both Yao's and Pedroza's supporter list--I doubt Goldwater would do that if she did not think she could control Yao, which she has done in the past. And, Lynn Forester's near-hysterical note also seemed to point to Yao as a Claremont 400 candidate.

Held and Baldonado, of course, are Preserve Claremonters/400ers. So, for her first two years, McHenry was pretty much by herself facing a council controlled by Held and Baldonado with Miller adding his support. There was no Yao-McHenry alliance, and Yao certainly did not defend McHenry publicly. And the abuse the 400 heaped on McHenry was merciless. They never acknowledged the legitimacy of her election and, in doing so, they were disregarding the 3,300-plus votes McHenry received. No matter what you think about McHenry, this cannot be denied: she had enough support to get elected. Every attempt by the Claremonsters to quash McHenry was a slap in the face to the people who voted for her.

In 2005, we've already noted, Preserve Claremont, with Paul Held, Valerie Martinez and Pastor Butch Henderson at the command, launched a two-pronged attack. In January 2005, they first organized with then-City Manager Glenn Southard, a campaign to try to censure McHenry. Held falsely accused McHenry of rifling through other councilmembers mail. And Southard accused McHenry of creating a "hostile work environment", which led to a special council meeting to decide whether the to commission a special investigation into the matter. The public showed up in support of McHenry, and the "investigation" or witch-hunt, depending on your perspective, died.

And, with Calaycay's election in 2005, the Bulletin's description is close to accurate, with McHenry and Calaycay on the one hand, Taylor and Baldonado on the other, and Yao somewhat in the middle, though as we've noted, Yao tends to side with Taylor and Baldonado on many things--pushing last year's failed assessment district for example.

--A note here, the notion of party politics at the council level, we've discovered, is fair nonsensical. We do not not believe our analysis of the things is anything like what the reader describes. For one thing, as we've just pointed out, McHenry hasn't been in control of anything for four years. We could also just as easily argue that Preserve Claremont's treatment of McHenry was no different than the Clinton impeachment. It is usually best to not try to apply partisan analogies to the Claremont situation, they just don't hold up on closer examination and often end up backwards in the looking glass world that is Claremont politics.

Lastly, we don't know anything about what McHenry or Calaycay have done regarding the Elderkin conflict of interest issue. It is probably best to ask them directly to get the truth--that's what we've suggested be done with Elderkin's issue--talk to Elderkin, ask her for a copy of whatever the city attorney gave her, and talk to the city attorney to verify Elderkin's account.

As we remarked a few days ago, the public and the council are entirely within their rights to know if the city attorney has treated Elderkin as a client. No, Elderkin should not have gone to the city attorney. What she should have done is what any of the other non-Claremont 400 candidates would have had to do: call their own attorney or, better yet, make call to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). They are the agency charged with interpreting and enforcing election and conflict of interest laws in California. The FPPC has a toll-free number, (866) ASK-FPPC, that can easily answer questions like Elderkin's.

The use of city staff time by candidates for election whether sitting councilmembers or unelected candidates is fairly strictly regulated. We do not believe that the applicable laws allow for the city attorney to give advice in Elderkin's situation.

A person who claims to be dedicated to fair process, as Elderkin does, would know better. Certainly, most other candidates for office in California would know how and when to contact the FPPC. Why didn't Elderkin?