Editorial

Deceiving voters is nothing new, nor, in many cases, is it even

illegal. But that doesn’t make the practice any less insidious or

fallacious.

Today’s election campaigns use all the tricks -- decoy candidates,

measures where “no” really means “yes” and adopting names of groups that

sound similar to an opponent’s.

Newport Beach, it seems, needs to prepare for the latter.

As city, slow-growth and development leaders gear up for the first

Greenlight ballot box test in November with the Koll Center expansion,

already it seems the deception is beginning.

A group calling itself the Greenlight Implementation Committee has

formed and has every earmark of being a political Trojan horse hatched by

the development forces.

First, we’d like to say that we mean to cast no aspersions on the

members of this group, one of whom is a good friend of this newspaper.

Yet, when one of those very members is the wife of a political

consultant hired by Koll to help run the November campaign, it seems a

little too fishy to believe that this group has anything to do with

implementing Greenlight.

Let’s be clear. Greenlight is the given name of a group of slow- and

no-growth activists who succeeded in passing a measure that would force a

citywide election for any development that exceeds certain set thresholds

on traffic and size.

Let’s also be clear about one other thing: We did not support that

group’s efforts, preferring instead to urge residents here to leave city

planning in the hands of elected leaders.

Our view did not prevail in November. But despite our earlier stance,

we feel strongly that the voters should not be deceived.

In fact, we also publicly opposed Measure T in November, a

counter-Greenlight initiative created by development and business leaders

in town, that would have served no real purpose other than to muddy the

ballot-box waters.

So we urge those on the anti-Greenlight side to fight fair. Avoid the

temptation to deceive and confuse.

Let the voters make their minds up armed with the truth and nothing

less.