The potential School Board candidates who said they were not running, but nevertheless were the target or contrary rumors, kept their word until the deadline was dead.
No Karlo Silbiger, perennials Gary Abrams and Robert Zirgulis.,
Anne Burke, Kelly Kent and Scott McVarish form the official lineup for the Nov. 3 election.
They are competing to win the seats being vacated by Laura Chardiet and Nancy Goldberg.
And perhaps an issue raised by several community members, that Ms. Kent declines to say “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance as a member of a city commission, will not be a prickly point in the rival campaigns.
Judging by the most recent comment from Mr. McVarish, posted nearby, it is not anyone’s business.
“We are all parents– running as parents,” he told the newspaper. “It seems wrong to attack parents trying to improve their schools.”
Late summer and autumn may, then, be unusually quiet.
Mr. McVarish promises to post video “articulating my vision as well as policy papers on my website of www.ForGreatSchools.org.”
At about the 3-minute mark in the January 6, 2015 webcast of the meeting of the Park and Recreation Committee, acting chairman, Scott Zeidman, asks Dana Russell to lead them in the Pledge of Allegiance. The video appears to show Ms Kent standing without placing her hand over her heart and remaining completely silent while all the other commissioners and others in the room are heard reciting it.
Link to city webcast — http://www.culvercity.org/Government/Misc/Webcast.aspx?id=010615
Just as the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed that the right to desecrate the flag is included in the Constitution’s protection of free speech, Ms Kent has the right to express herself by not reciting our country’s Pledge of Allegiance.
I wonder: What part(s) of the Pledge does she find offensive? What would she change? What does she think should be said in place of the Pledge of Allegiance?
Of course, voters in our community also have the right to express themselves by not to voting for Ms Kent on Election Day.
It appears that we’ve got 3 great candidates running to serve in a very important office with very legitimate issues at play. I can’t imagine anything– literally anything– mattering less than whether or not Kelly Kent personally chooses to recite the pledge.
Ms Kelly can do whatever she wants, as a private citizen. But, she has chosen to put herself squarely in front of our community as a candidate-role model running for an elected office.
What I find quite ironic is, how Ms Kent could be seeking a leadership role in our small city, in a state and in a country, to which she seems unable to bring herself to publicly display the solemn act of pledging allegiance.
You may find the act of public allegiance-pledging to be “solemn”. Others may not. I myself do not. What matters to me in an elected representative is whether or not he or she serves honestly and with integrity, and the extent to which his or her relevant policy positions are in alignment with my own. *Those* are the candidate-role models I look for. The question of whether or not he or she puts a hand over his or her chest and publicly mouths words in the direction of a flag? Man, that is waaaaaay, way way way down my list of priorities. So far down.
Patrick, I think you and Ms Kent might find yourselves in the scant minority if you were to canvas our small community to see how many of us still say the Pledge and continue to see it as a solemn recommitting to the ideals it expresses, each and every time we say it.
For many of the younger generations, the pledge may seem cliché, old-fashion or too sentimental. But, even though, Red Skelton’s rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance, along with his description of what each of the words and phrases represent was televised way back in 1969, it still rings true today.
Maybe if you listen to it, it just might rekindle your love of country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKM3me0K2os
Am I in the minority on this, George? Maybe. I confess I don’t honestly get the sense that most of my friends and neighbors here in Culver City have the pledge of allegiance high on their list of voting issues. But maybe they do, and I’m just way off base on this one. If so, I guess I’m okay with that. Sometimes a guy finds himself in the minority on something.
As to the second part: I do love my country, very much… and I love the rest of the world too. The way I choose to demonstrate that love is not by publicly reciting a pledge, but by trying (in whatever small ways I can) to help make it better, and fairer, and by teaching my children to be responsible citizens of their community, and of their planet.
Peace to you, George.
And so begins another positive campaign. After the personal attacks on Nancy Goldberg, Karlo Silbiger, and teacher’s unions last time around, is it any wonder that so few want to run?
I hope no one thinks that my commenting on this issue is a personal attack on Ms Kent. It is not. I do not know her. I do not know her views on any of our local issues. I have never met her nor do I have a past personal grudge to settle. If any other candidate were to do the same, I would be writing the same about them.
No matter what her views are on the issues, many in this community will find her inability to express this core community value—saying the Pledge of Allegiance publicly—as an affront to their own core values. Voters still want to see their core values reflected in their elected representatives and her inaction is disturbing enough to give them pause before voting.
Hopefully, future candidates looking to run for a city-wide office will look beyond their close circle of friends and supporters to see if their own views also reflect the core values of the community at large.
Ms Kent’s primary supporters seem to have miscalculated in thinking that her failure to say the Pledge of Allegiance at public meetings would cause a public reaction. Maybe in their own political circles saying the Pledge is not really “that big a deal” or that it has lost its personal importance. But she is now running for a city-wide office and it will matter at the polls.