Civic-Minded Voters Should Pitch Those Last-Minute Campaign Pitches

I’m in the zone.

And I’m not coming out until I vote on Tuesday. You can knock on my door and bombard my mailbox with fliers and brochures, but you won’t get through to me. The zone can’t be penetrated.

So if you’re a political candidate or campaign manager who wants to tell me that your opponent is a wife-beating, tax-cheating satanic worshipper, save your breath or your postage.

Had you informed me of that last month or a couple weeks ago or even as late as yesterday, I would have been greatly interested. There’s a good chance I would have factored such things into my decision.

But now that I’m in the zone, forget it. All last-minute political mailers, which historically have had all the integrity of an Enron annual earnings report, will go directly to the trashcan.

I enter the zone knowing full well that some of the stuff in the final-weekend political barrage might be true. The problem is, there’s no way to find out for sure ... so into the trash it goes.

Being in the zone works the other way too. It prevents me from seeing or believing flattering things about a candidate. If you were that appealing, you should have told me long ago, so I’d have had a chance to check your references. You think I want to hire you for public office without a background check?

Here’s what it means to be in the zone:

Don’t send me grainy, doctored photos of your opponent, making it look as if he’s just come off a 12-day bender or has the genetic code of a werewolf. If you’re sending a photo of yourself, try to make it one that was shot within the past 10 years.

Don’t call my house this weekend telling me that your opponent is six months behind on child support or that your candidate has the endorsement of every local police department, PTA and civic club--not to mention the entire U.S. Olympic team.

Don’t send me a mailer with a resume that reads as if you ought to be nominated for Time’s Person of the Year, instead of running for a city council seat. Even if you tell me how you single-handedly made Operation Desert Storm a success or turned a failed company around in six months, I won’t believe it.

Don’t tell me that an incumbent Orange County judge, uncontested on the ballot, has been accused of downloading kiddie porn ... uh, scratch that. It happens to be true, but note that the story has been reported at length in the weeks leading up to the election.

Although I’ll be safe in the zone, others will not. And Orange County history tells us that some campaigns will pull out all the stops in the final stretch.

Years ago in Santa Ana, opponents of a Latino mayoral candidate sent out mailers depicting Latino children holding rifles. The suggestion was that the children inevitably would grow up to be gang members.

On a lighter note, a local candidate some years back said she’d been warned that the opposing campaign might dredge up some dirt by talking to her high school sweetheart. Have at it, she said, noting that she’d married her high school sweetheart.

The campaign managers are hoping you don’t go into the zone. They’ll argue that, with limited funds, they have to save their ad blitz for the final days. It’s just a coincidence, they’ll say, that voters will have no chance of assessing the truth of the late-arriving campaign pitches.

I admit that being in the zone means you’ll run the risk of missing some potentially juicy stuff. You might have to disregard that a candidate for city council was a Taliban recruiter or that a certain county initiative is secretly supported by a witch’s coven, but so be it.

Consider this your civic duty.

Be a good citizen. As of this morning, join me in the zone.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821; by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626; or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.