Disingenuous.
After this long campaign season, that’s the word I use to describe David Gauny, the supposed reformer who wants your vote tomorrow for City Council.
It hasn’t always been like this. I once respected Gauny; he was the guy who organized against what he saw as a poorly thought out hospital expansion. He was organized and presentable, bringing sharp PowerPoints to the City Council meeting. He made a compelling case in a reasonable manner. NIMBY? Maybe, but backed by reason, clear thinking and intelligence.
For whatever reason, he chose to dump those attributes this year in his campaign. He’s now just like all the rest. Consider:
Gauny rightly makes a big deal about G&L-backed Citizens for Integrity in Government spending tens of thousands of dollars in our Council election. But when the California Republican Assembly fails to disclose locally the thousands it spent in his favor, he defends it by saying that the law doesn’t require CRA to disclose because it’s a state-wide, dues-paying organization.
So what? This isn’t about the letter of the law, it’s about the spirit of the law. And the results are the same: city voters don’t know that mailers in support of Gauny are being funded by out-of-town interests, just like the people he’s running against.
Remember, Gauny wants us to think he operates on a different moral plane than the incumbents, that he’s the people’s representative.
And then there’s this mailer I received late last week, by far the most demagogic & manipulative mailer I’ve received since I started this blog:
Click for Full Size
Just looking at this mailer, you’d think Congressman Buck McKeon and Supervisor Antonovich have endorsed Gauny. But they haven’t. McKeon endorsed the incumbents, and Supervisor Antonovich hasn’t endorsed anyone. Just about anyone can get their picture with the Congressman and the Supe; it means nothing. He’s clearly trying to manipulate voters into thinking that those two people support him, when in reality, they don’t necessarily. About the only local politician who has endorsed Gauny is Bob Kellar.
That’s disingenuous.
And then there’s the content of the mailer itself. Gauny says the streets of the SCV are “teeming with people who have entered our country illegally.” Really? Which streets exactly? McBean? Soledad? Del Monte? Wiley Canyon?
I live in Newhall and see the day laborers Gauny took pictures of for the flip side of this mailer. “Teeming” (a word that calls to mind an insect infestation or other unpleasantness) is the last word I’d use to describe them; there are usually several dozen, perhaps 100 in Newhall along Railroad, 15th Street and Sierra Highway, all standing around waiting for us to hire them because, guess what, we have been. For years.
Besides, the best estimates we have for the number of illegal immigrants in the SCV is about 7,000, just over 4% of the City’s population and under 3% of the valley’s total population. Hardly “teeming.”
Then he goes on to say our schools are overcrowded. Does Gauny think we’re stupid? Enrollment is down valley wide, and numbers man Myers says the trend is set to continue. Saugus just shuttered two schools. There’s even less of an impetus for Castaic High School now that the economy has slowed. Just how many children does Gauny think are here because of illegal immigrants? And what would a Santa Clarita City Councilman do about local schools anyway?
Again, he’s being manipulative and disingenuous.
Next he says organized crime is coming to the SCV and that our emergency rooms are “bursting at the seams.” All blatant scare tactics. There is no proof of this whatsoever. He’s basing his claims about massage parlors off of an anonymous letter passed around weeks ago to churches. Just think about that for a second.
Finally, he says he wants to “cut spending” at City Hall. Really? He must have had a change of heart because it was Gauny who spoke forcefully for giving a $200,000 handout of our money to local business interests so that they could create the Economic Development Corporation.
Don’t vote for Gauny. He’s brought only negativity and divisiveness to this City Council election, and a vote for him is a vote for fear and scapegoating.
In the interests of fairness: I’ve been asked to include this link to Dave Bossert’s recent opinion piece on the election and David Gauny for balance.
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