Deciphering Those Ballot Designations Can Be a Real Job

One candidate calls himself a “personal transportation facilitator.” He’s a taxi driver. Another calls himself a teacher--of Esperanto, it turns out. A third candidate calls himself a computer infrastructure analyst/university student/radio talk show host, and you wonder if he has time to sit on the school board.

Ask a few questions, you begin wondering what’s true.

Candidates’ ballot designations approach free speech at its purest. They can call themselves almost anything they want, and there’s a good chance no one will check on the truthfulness. Most people don’t outright lie, they just exaggerate a bit, which--some might argue--is good practice for someone going into politics.

You own a hairdressing salon, you’re a businessman, just like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It’s like the Jackie Mason joke. Your son doesn’t drive a truck. He’s in the trucking business. Another kid isn’t an orderly. He’s in the medical field.

Raymond Mills, the Reform Party candidate for the Assembly in the 70th District, has run a losing campaign in the past calling himself a taxi driver, and he thinks the designation may have hurt him. Maybe being a “personal transportation facilitator” can change his luck with the “multitudes who elect the officeholders.”

Mills, his party’s state chair, wasn’t trying to fool anyone when he listed his occupation. “I was just putting in a little humor because so many people try to pump up their titles,” he said. “A lot of people told me I should have put businessman, which is disingenuous because I’m proud of being a taxi driver.”

What is amazing is that politicians try to fluff their resumes on facts so easily checked.

For 25 years, then-Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder claimed on her resume that she had received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Wayne State University. The truth came out in 1988 during a race for Congress--that she hadn’t attended college.

Former Oregon Rep. Wes Cooley was convicted in 1997 of claiming in a state voter guide that he served with the Army in Korea when he never left the United States.

“This type of exaggeration and lying becomes habit forming,” said Fred Smoller, a political science professor at Chapman University. “Tell a little white lie, and soon they’re lying about things with public consequences.”

Politicians aren’t alone in fluffing their resumes; it’s just that reporters and political opponents are more likely to check their veracity. The further you are from the public eye, the less likely. Usually. Tim Johnson, manager of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, was fired when his claimed wartime exploits turned out to be contrived.

When office seekers stretch the truth--or at least tug at it a little--these bona fides are supposed to make them more attractive to voters.

It might help J. Tilman William in his run for the Garden Grove Unified School District board to say that besides being a retired businessman, he’s a teacher. He is--of Esperanto, “the only language on Earth that unites all people,” he said.

When does he teach the class? “Every so often.”

Ali Abdolsalehi is running for the Laguna Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees. On his ballot statement he listed himself as--take a deep breath--a computer infrastructure analyst/university student/radio talk show host.

The radio station is KRSI, which broadcasts in Farsi, but can only be picked up with special radios.

In his statement, the 22-year-old says he has discussed his education ideas with President Clinton and “have been advised by the secretary of education on how such advancements can be implemented.”

He said in an interview he met Clinton in 1996 at an anti-drug forum in Washington. Clinton, he said, spoke to his group for five minutes. Abdolsalehi took up three minutes of that time with questions. So much for the meeting.

On another trip to the capital, he said, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced him to the secretary of education. He walked into the meeting between the senator and the secretary for two minutes and shook her hand, Abdolsalehi said.

Who was the secretary?

“I have no idea. I just remember it was the secretary of education.”

Abdolsalehi said he had two honorary doctorates from the University of London. The only reason they were honorary, he said, was because he hadn’t completed his undergraduate work.

He was taking care of that and was enrolled at UCLA and UC Irvine, he said. He would receive his degree in computer science at the end of the year, he said.

Calls to the two schools show he never was enrolled. He also said he was a student at Cypress College, a two-year school. That, at least, did check out.