With Saturday’s hot oil-drilling meeting for the community coming up at the noon hour on the West L.A. College campus, Bernard Parks finds himself tooting the horns of a dilemma:
Should Mr. Parks give back the money?
Or should he keep it?
Three months and 5 days before his next ballot box test, he has made it clear which path he will tread.
When one is trapped in a compromising position the normal human impulse dictates that the trappee execute his his exit with alacrity and a minimal amount of comment.
Mr. Parks has adhered to only the latter principle.
The taller and older of the two candidates for Yvonne Brathwaite Burke’s chair on the County Board of Supervisors finds himself in a perceived pickle this sunny morning.
Four years ago, during one of the many campaigns he has run in the 6 years since he was discharged as the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Dept., Mr. Parks received a $1,000 donation from the Plains, Exploration & Production Co.
Placing Gift in Context
That is a whopper, considering the warm water that angry community members, especially from Culver Crest, have thrown on PXP this summer. In a populist sense, it scarcely is hyperbolic to report that PXP has become everybody’s favorite villain this season.
Back to ’04 when the donation was registered. No one, friend or foe of Mr. Parks, remarked at the time that it would be a horrible embarrassment if the name of that now radioactive corporate donor were disclosed.
So what is the big deal?
This was 2 years before the spectacular overnight gas leak — caused by PXP and barely acknowledgedin some later documents — drove Culver Crest families out of their homes, in fear and anger, in the middle of the night.
Mr. Parks, who himself lives within sniffing distance of the Baldwin Hills oil field where PXP’S exponentially increased drilling will take place, may have had no idea in ’04 that he would be running for Ms. Brathwaite Burke’s seat 4 years later, a much different time when accepting money from PXP would be equivalent to sleeping with the enemy.
Several provocative points in this stormy scenario need to be drawn:
• Should a candidate be held responsible for a donation he was given 4 years earlier?
• What was PXP’s motivation in supporting Mr. Parks’s campaign? Steve Rusch, PXP executive, told the newspaper: “To be honest, we supported some of his wife’s charity work. I just heard this morning about this (’04 donation). I will have to check it out and get back to you.”
• Two weeks ago yesterday, Mr. Parks was saluted by supporters for asking 4 city of Los Angeles agencies to take a closer, more critical look at the Draft Environmental Impact Report and the Community Standards District, the latter authored by PXP, in the name of the safety of the million people within range of the Baldwin Hills oil field. Was the Parks gesture symbolic, meaningless or meaningful?
• Finally, why doesn’t Mr. Parks spare himself future embarrassment and give back the thousand bucks that his campaign coffers would not miss? And think how many points he would win for making such a gesture. But it probably is too late to recover from such a gaffe. You know the campaign of his rival and the favorite in the race, state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City), is going to hammer away at the donation between now and November.
• Mr. Parks told Rick Orlov of the Daily News that he was going to stand his ground on the $1,000 donation. It was his, and he was going to keep it. So there. Precisely, he said: “I didn’t know they contributed to me, and it just shows that my vote can’t be bought.” In fact it does not appear to show any such thing.
