Chance for reform on verge of being lost
The noise surrounding possible reform of Newport Beach’s campaign
laws has become deafening.
Since before the November election, the city’s two main political
camps -- for simplicity’s sake, Greenlight on one side and
pro-business leaders on the other -- have been engaged in an
extremely public fight that at times has been about development and
traffic in town and at others has been about the political process in
Newport.
This month -- about four months after the election was decided --
the debate turned entirely to the political, with both sides leveling
charges that the other had violated city campaign rules. Such charges
are serious, and in other situations would deserve serious discussion
and action. But given the build-up in animosity and the frequency
with which these two groups have been going at it, it is hard to
treat them as anything other than political back-and-forth or
one-upmanship.
It’s also all too clear why the charges are being made now: City
leaders will soon be taking up campaign reform in study sessions,
which were initiated by Councilman John Heffernan.
These sessions have the potential to improve the local political
playing field vastly.
Among the suggestions already made are a requirement that
candidates file the scripts of all recorded campaign messages with
the city clerk’s office before they are used and strictures
forbidding candidates from misrepresenting their political party
affiliations and endorsements on campaign literature. Both would have
squelched the more notorious incidents from the past election.
But the council discussions that are scheduled for Tuesday will go
nowhere if they degenerate into a shouting match. And the lead-in to
them gives little call for optimism that the talks will be any more
substantive than the last election.
If that is the case, a rare opportunity will have been missed to
make Newport Beach elections a model of decorum, decency and results.
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