Campaign ‘Hit Pieces’: Negative, Divisive Instruments

As longtime supporters of Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young, we found ourselves somewhere between disappointment and disgust upon receiving the campaign flyer filled with photos of gun-toting Latino children and adolescents.

Sent by the police officers’ Political Action Committee, the flyer suggested that only Latinos, and all Latinos, are gun-crazy gangbangers. To make matters worse, all the candidates supported by the PAC--Young, Glenn Mondo, Tom Lutz, Lisa Mills and (Municipal) Judge Donna L. Crandall--were well-financed white candidates running against underfinanced Latino, black or Asian opponents in Orange County’s most Latino city.

The police officers’ PAC mailer was thus at best a display of insensitivity, and at worst an attempt to play the race card to scare white voters into voting for its candidates. The voters of Santa Ana rejected this tactic of racial divisiveness and at least elected a somewhat more ethnically diverse City Council.

Let us hope the new city government follows their lead. Santa Ana will never solve its many problems until our leaders work to unite all its inhabitants around a common, positive vision.

LESLIE and MERLE RABINE

Santa Ana