Re “Forget Waldo. Where’s Vernon? Mielke Letter Leaves Him Out”
I have known Ari Noonan for years, and consider him a friend.
But I have just about had it with his attempts to stir things up in our community.
Rather than publishing an online paper that could serve as a thoughtful forum for issues and ideas, he has chosen a different path.
It is ironic that I am writing this today, because just this week I decided that I would no longer contribute to a “newspaper” that is so relentlessly dedicated to fostering conflict.
One last time: Here is the story.
The Culver City Federation of Teachers, together with the Assn. of Classified Employees, interviewed all seven candidates for School Board. We voted to endorse three candidates: Karlo Silbiger, Claudia Vizcarra and Vernon Taylor.
As a small local union with limited resources, our next step in helping these candidates get elected involves going to our affiliate organizations and asking for their support. Some neighboring unions and labor organizations help with money, some provide mailing lists, some provide precinct-walking lists, some provide phone lists and some write letters to their members who live in Culver City, urging them to support our candidates.
We are getting help this year from the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Assn., United Teachers Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. This last group, the County Fed, does not rubber-stamp our candidates. It interviews each of them as part of their own endorsement process.
This year, the County Fed endorsed Karlo and Claudia. Vernon was not endorsed. I was not there. So I do not know how the interviews went or how the Fed arrived at their endorsements.
This created a problem for us. The County Fed's policy is that local unions cannot use Fed support for candidates that they did not endorse. If we wanted to use their resources, we could only use them on behalf of Karlo and Claudia.
As a result, one of our direct mail pieces did not include Vernon Taylor.
What thefrontpageonline.com does not tell you, and is not interested in finding out, is that all our other direct mail pieces include all three candidates.
We used other resources to send direct mail pieces to the permanent absentee voters, asking them to support all three candidates.
UTLA wrote a letter to their members asking them to support all three candidates.
We sent a direct mail piece to CFT members living in Culver City, asking them to support all three candidates.
ACE is sending a direct mail piece to CTA members living in Culver City, asking them to support all three candidates.
The phone banking we have done to date has included all three candidates.
We are sending one final direct mail piece to Culver City voters in the next few days, asking them to support all three candidates.
We have not abandoned Vernon Taylor. He has appeared in all of our direct mail pieces except one.
As the candidates and their supporters know, these campaigns are expensive. Decisions are often made that are influenced by the resources that are available to you.
For us, we had to answer this question:
If you are working for three candidates, do you accept help if it is limited to just two of those candidates?
Finally, as we head into the final days of this election season, is there any chance of focusing on the candidates and the issues? As a teacher, I know how essential it is to have the right people making the decisions that affect our kids. Let's give the manufactured drama a break and keep our eyes on the prize: Our kids and our schools.
Mr. Mielke, president of the Teachers Union, may be contacted at davidmielke@ccusd.org
Ari Noonan responds:
Mr. Mielke’s stature as a raconteur and gentleman of admirable qualities remain undiminished. As a scarred, sometimes bleeding, veteran of occasional marital wars, I have achingly learned persons who are close periodically will travel separate paths. Once I was married to a physical woman who did not speak to me for 10 days. At least it interrupted my three-argument losing streak.
I counted three times in Mr. Mielke’s essay that he urged us to change the subject. I don’t blame him. Every time I have embarrassed myself, I have said to a wife, “My God those shoes look great on you.” They never went for it.
Mr. Mielke committed monumental gaffes in his deceptive, miscalculated letter to unsuspecting Culver City voters.
Routinely, sins of omission look less serious to the guilty party than to the rest of the world.
As president of the Teachers Union, Mr. Mielke wrote a letter that said only “I recommend Karlo Silbiger and Claudia Vizcarra.”
Didn’t Mr. Mielke’s own union endorse three people, including Vernon Taylor, back in August?
Yes, but a guy can’t tell everything he knows, Murgatroyd.
There is not a hint in the letter that the County Federation of Labor – a hardcore group that thinks flexibility should be punished by death – had a slimy hand in this purposely misleading message to vulnerable voters.
The County Fed made an off-stage deal with Mr. Mielke: They would help or pay for this letter as long as their shaky name was not mentioned.
Not only that, since Mr. Taylor refused to be politically correct and toe the narrow County Fed line on some questions, they refused, in their wisdom, to endorse him.
Fine, except – Problem No. 2 – Mr. Mielke was not allowed to mention Mr. Taylor’s name anywhere in the letter that came out under his signature, even though his union endorsed Mr. Taylor.
Integrity appears to have left town on holiday.
In the unlikely event the tilted County Fed had been straight with voters and said “We endorse Mr. Silbiger and Ms. Vizcarra,” there would be no discussion this afternoon. But “honesty” and “County Fed” seldom share the same sentence.
A third weakness in Mr. Mielke’s argument is that that snubbed Mr. Taylor’s name appears in all other mailers.
As a counter point, that is the equivalent of contending that, sure, I may have rammed the car in front of me on the freeway. But by thunder, look at all of those lucky cars that I did not strike.
Belatedly, it is becoming clearer why a wife or two along the route resented me when I wanted to change the subject. I just didn’t stay mad long enough to suit them.
