[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Re “The Times Can’t Think of a Valid Reason to Endorse Parks. Oh, Well.”

Running for office against an incumbent, even a questionably popular one such as Bernie Parks, is comparable to your company transferring you from Beverly Hills to Jellico, TN.

Tougher to breathe. Gaining ground amounts to fighting gravity.

You don’t have to be reminded the air pressure has plummeted to gasping level.

Last Saturday the Los Angeles Times endorsed two-term incumbent Mr. Parks in such chilled language that readers should first have donned a coat before swallowing the ice cubed words.

How Tall Is the Hill?

Three weeks to the day before the Tuesday, March 8, election for the Los Angeles City Council, Forescee Hogan-Rowles still is in second place behind Mr. Parks, arguably a little closer than when she began campaigning last summer for her second run at him.

On the theory that a guy has got to do something with his time if he is going to get up in the morning but is in no mood to legislate, Mr. Parks — obviously an uncomfortable misfit on the Council — has run for every available office north of catcher of dogs and lost.

In the second paragraph of the endorsement, the Times almost appeared embarrassed for choosing Mr. Parks, who has failed to distinguish himself in eight years on the Council after getting whacked when he pursued a second term as Chief of the LAPD.

Cheerio to Cheerios

Mr. Parks’s career symbol is an empty box of cereal. The Times admitted as much.

The newspaper sounded as if they felt badly choosing Mr. Parks on the grounds that he has far more luminous name recognition. Besides, hardly anyone but (close) relatives vote in these off-kilter elections, which means the Times picked him because they think he will win not because he is superior.

After offering a list of esoteric, irrelevant reasons to back Mr. Parks, including two of my alltime favorites, “strength and acuity” — huh? — the Times’ bowed in the direction of the better-qualified Ms. Hogan-Rowles.

“That is not to denigrate his principal opponent in the District 8 race. Forescee Hogan-Rowles, who runs a nonprofit, is smart and civic-minded. She understands finance and has served on the board that oversees the city’s Department of Water and Power, giving her insight into the government and how it operates. She is a credible candidate and deserves to be taken seriously by voters.”

I repeat: Huh?

The Times invests 64 words telling me how comprehensively qualified she is, how effective she would be if chosen, and, strangely, starts galloping away in the opposite direction.

In the next sentence, the Times bashes its own reasoning.

“But even though Hogan-Rowles is running as an outsider, she would add to the council’s status quo. She is backed heavily in this campaign by organized labor…”— a stunningly un-Times-like accusation.

Seven days a week, the Times cheers for big labor, except in this peculiar circumstance.

Huh?

Ms. Hogan-Rowles told the newspaper:

“I am pleased that the L.A. Times says that I am ‘smart and civic-minded, that I ‘understand finance’ and that my experience as a Commissioner gives me ‘insight into government and how it operates.’

“It’s outrageous that he takes both his city salary of $178,789 and his city retirement of $265,000 while he spends most of his time criticizing average working families. He can’t be trusted to be a fiscal watchdog when he himself is double-dipping. But the Times’s editorial seems to have forgotten that.”

We will study Ms. Hogan-Rowles more closely in the next 21 days, but she will remain our choice to relieve Mr. Parks of his obvious misery and show him how a Councilperson should think.