Agran Slighted in Times’ Coverage

I am writing this letter to make some comments regarding the varying degrees of recognition and coverage The Times has been providing to various announced Democratic candidates for their party’s presidential nomination.

According to The Times, for example, former Irvine Mayor Larry Agran is not a candidate to be taken seriously, since he has yet to attain national recognition and, therefore, the reporter doesn’t feel compelled to even mention him as one of the candidates in The Times edition of the county in which Agran lives.

Never mind that Agran is a brilliant and very articulate young statesman, who a few years back almost single-handedly created a national organization known as Local Elected Officials. It was used to help awaken city officials nationwide to the relevance to local politics of such national decisions as expenditures of billions on defense systems.

Clearly, Larry Agran, and perhaps several other candidates yet to announce, are long shots, but when they are highly credible individuals like this person, we believe they should be given the same coverage as (better-known) candidates. Who knows, they may say something so interesting and compelling that their candidacies will catch fire.

Certainly one cannot be satisfied with the caliber of persons who have recently ended up living in the White House. Maybe if we enabled some of these lesser known people to be heard/read, the overall quality of presidential candidates and presidents would be elevated above the abysmal depths to which we have recently sunk.

RALPH A. KENNEDY

Fullerton