Campaigns Deluge Voters With Phone Calls

Re “Teachers Union Wins Back the Power in L.A. Schools,” March 6: If Los Angeles Board of Education President Caprice Young and her staff wonder how they lost the election, I could tell them, but I don’t need any more of their phone calls. In the 10 days or so preceding the election, we were deluged by both candidates with mailers, door knockers and phone calls, with Young out-campaigning her opponent at least three to one. Last Sunday I told one of her phone people that if I got one more phone call on her behalf, I would pass on the election. Four calls later I did. It is the first election in which I have not cast a ballot since 1960. I doubt if I am alone.

Michael Belson

Studio City

*

In recent weeks, the campaign for the 10th District City Council seat generated the usual pile of slick junk-mail endorsements and throwaway fliers. But what on Earth is going on with the phone solicitations? It was enough to make me want to withhold my vote out of spite. My home phone was getting 15 and 20 calls a day from campaign solicitors. They always asked me whom I was voting for and I thought if I told them, they’d leave me alone. But they never let up. Even the candidate I said I was voting for continued to harass me. What an outrageous invasion of privacy. And to think after all that, only 12% of the voting public showed up! Maybe the other 88% were even madder than I was.

Ruth Askren

Los Angeles

*

The best part about Tuesday’s City Council election is what happens next -- Los Angeles has long needed a shake-up (and not that nasty Earth-moving kind!). After reading “Next Council’s Tangled Ties” (editorial, March 6), I belly-laughed for the first time in nearly two years. What an exciting new season we’ll watch on “Survivor: Los Angeles.” I promise I won’t miss an episode. Hmm, I wonder whom we should vote off the island.

Melissa Richardson Banks

Los Angeles