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.