From the Publisher/Arnold G. York
It’s 20 days until we go to the polls and decide on this City Council race (although I know many of you have already voted absentee). This election is rapidly turning out to be a classic example of what in politics could be called, “the law of unexpected consequences.”
Whatever anybody plugs in on one end seems to come out just the opposite on the other end.
Invariably, in any election, and particularly in Malibu city elections, there are almost always charges of unethical conduct, false or dishonest advertising, violation of campaign finance laws and challenges to whether some group is or isn’t an independent expenditure committee and therefore governed by a different set of rules. Often, in most elections, some of these charges are true, but by the time you know that, the election is long past and no one really cares. So there is a great incentive by candidates and their supporters to try and do whatever they can to win and then worry about the consequences later.
Because Malibu is a well-heeled community and reasonably divided much like the rest of the country is on national issues, candidates and their supporters, almost without exception, rush off to court on one theory or another to try and get a temporary restraining order, called TRO’s, to try and block their opponent while the election campaigning is going on.
This time the city decided to try something different to see if it could get candidates and their supporters to abide by the rules. The city (meaning the council) decided before this election to hire an ethics consultant, who recruited a Campaign Watch Commission. The commission is to hear the cases in ethics disputes and render quick decisions while the campaign was going on. The consultant and the members of the commission are people of impressive backgrounds and reputations. The commission includes a retired L.A. City Council member, a judge, former officials of the League of Woman Voters, a journalist and academics. All have considerable intellectual gravitas and many have local, regional and national reputations. They have absolutely no axe to grind.
Still, as I’ve watched the process unfold, if the purpose was to secure ethical compliance, I’m afraid it doesn’t appear to be working very well.
There have been a number complaints filed with the Campaign Watch Commission, and they’ve already made some decisions and some findings. Already, everyone appears to be claiming victory in those decisions, and I’m sure next week there will be new ads or mailings trumpeting victory. Then there will be new complaints to the Campaign Watch Commission that those are misrepresentations and untruths, and distorting what they actually decided last week. The lawyers’ letters are already flying back and forth, and there are allegations of campaign law violations of free speech and just about anything else a group of bright, highly-paid lawyers can think up.
The truth is that democracy is not a very pretty process. We can’t seem to agree on even the basic ground rules, other than the fact that you can’t use a gun. We have great difficulty in agreeing on what’s ethical, or what’s true, and certainly on what kind of limitations we want to put on anyone’s right to speak, write or advertise about their views, even if we believe them to be unethical or untrue. We’re deeply divided on campaign finance laws because speaking and writing require that you be heard. In our world, getting yourself heard is a very expensive proposition, and many campaign laws are calculated to block the dissemination of other opinions.
This is nothing new. If there had been an ethics czar in the beginning of the Republic, I’m sure that Adams would have gone running, charging that Jefferson had unethically and dishonestly misrepresented the Alien and Sedition Acts in the presidential campaign.
My prejudices are pretty clear. I’m a First Amendment absolutist. I find that charges of “unethical campaign conduct,” like charges of “pornography” and more recently, charges of “offensive radio and TV language,” tend to be more in the eye of the beholder than anything you can measure with an objective standard. We have a political process with which to battle these things out, and, ultimately, to decide. It’s called a ballot. It ain’t pretty, but it’s the best we’ve got. And on a whole I trust it, and don’t worry as much about the process.
The telephone poll
This past weekend I had an unusual experience; I actually got called for a telephone poll on the Malibu election, as many of you were. I have never been called before because, typically, people take me off the list, so this was a first for me. It started out fair enough. They wanted to know where I stood on some issues, whether I viewed certain people favorable or unfavorable, and also the depth of my feeling. Then about halfway through, it kind of turned and the pollster started asking loaded questions like, “If I told you that Jeff Jennings and Ken Kearsley beat their wives and toasted small children over an open fire, would that make you more or less favorable to them? Somewhat or a great deal?” You get the idea. I suspect they were looking for the hot buttons, and the answers they got will probably appear in the campaign materials or videotapes shortly. Malibu CAN supporter Ozzie Silna told our reporter Jonathan Friedman that he commissioned the poll, and that he expected it would cost $10,000 to $15,000. I think Ozzie might be in for a shock when he gets his bill, because my sources tell me that an 18-minute to 19-minute poll like this, to as many people as probably ended up being called, could easily run more than $25,000 in Malibu. This is an expensive town to poll. There are a great deal of answering machines, household help and many people who hang up on you. You must make a lot of calls and call-backs to get the 400 or so it takes to be statistically significant. I hope he got his money’s worth.