Somers deserves seat due to past campaign...

Somers deserves seat due to past campaign actions

Based on the principles of equity, fairness, and moral

responsibility and the fact that she was an incumbent who received

9,192 votes in the year 2000 election (i.e. only 32 votes less than

Karen Robinson), the Costa Mesa City Council should appoint Heather

Somers to fill the vacant seat created by Karen Robinson’s voluntary

resignation.

Notwithstanding the culpable conduct of others (including

Candidate Chris Steel), the simple and undisputed fact is that the

Costa Mesa City Clerk’s office should have declared one of the 20

nominating signatures on Steel’s nominating paper to be an obvious

forgery ... and thereafter excluded his name from the year 2000 Costa

Mesa City Council election ballot. Had Steel been properly excluded

from the ballot (and under any reasonable set of assumptions and

applicable legal principles concerning election dynamics), Somers

almost certainly would have been elected to office in the first

place.

Whether the failure of the City Clerk’s Office to detect this

obviously forged nominating signature was the result of negligence or

deliberate misconduct is now an apparently irrelevant question that I

believe has not ever been adequately investigated in the past. What

is not irrelevant is the continuing effect that this mistake had on

the outcome of the year 2000 election (i.e. if Steel had not been on

the ballot, he obviously could not have won the election and

displaced Heather Somers from a seat on the Costa Mesa City Council

for the past 2 1/2years).

When the obviously forged signature was first brought to the

city’s attention, it spent several thousand dollars to obtain a legal

opinion advising that nothing could be done to remedy the situation.

However, now that Mayor Karen Robinson has voluntarily resigned from

the Costa Mesa City Council, the city has a golden opportunity to

eliminate any future impact of the city’s past mistake by appointing

Somers to what would have been her rightful seat on the City Council.

In my opinion, it is not a question of whether the current council

members like or dislike Somers or her politics or prefer the politics

of one of the other 24 interested persons. Rather, the question is

whether or not the Costa Mesa City Council is going to step up to the

plate and do the “right thing” and exercise its legal authority and

moral responsibility to correct a wrong committed by their own

employee. In my opinion, the impact that my proposed appointment of

Heather Somers will, might, or could have on the future actions taken

or not taken by the Costa Mesa City Council should not even be a

consideration in the current appointment process.

Further, given his well documented personal responsibility for

allowing a forged signature on his year 2000 nomination paper, it is

my opinion that there is only one candidate who Steel should support

for the contemplated appointment. And that person is Somers.

In making the foregoing arguments, I do not dispute the legal

right of the Costa Mesa City Council to appoint any of the 24 other

interested persons. I am simply suggesting that the City of Costa

Mesa is morally bound to correct an obvious and inexcusable error

made by one of its employees by appointing Somers.

MICHAEL W. SZKARADEK

Costa Mesa

EDITOR’S NOTE: Michael Szkaradek has pursued a legal challenge to

Councilman Chris Steel’s 2000 election, citing an allegedly forged

signature.

The right is not always right

Thank God for candidates like 70th Assembly District hopeful

Cristi Cristich, who committed the “sin” of supporting Bill Clinton

in 1996. Despairing that the GOP was going to acknowledge and include

the party’s moderates any time soon, and given the alternative, I

voted for him, too, as did many of my Orange County Republican

friends and family. So I don’t consider Cristich’s action a

“downtick,” as GOP fundraiser Buck Johns is quoted as saying in the

Daily Pilot. Rather, Cristich sounds like a candidate who is willing

to engage the ambiguities and complexities of the issues we face in

2003. Maybe, just maybe, she offers a fresh alternative to the same

old unimaginative thinking that has dominated the local party for too

long -- people, for example, who express shock that one can be a

Christian and vote Democratic, that one can hate abortion and support

choice.

My pastor has a sign on her office wall which reads, “Christ died

to take away your sins, not your mind.” Think about it as you follow

the character assassination that Cristich is likely to endure during

the campaign at the hands of the “Christian” right.

JEAN HASTINGS ARDELL

Corona del Mar