Mayor’s action raises endorsement questions

I picked up a March 5 edition of the Leader, and my attention was

immediately drawn to the front-page story with the headline, “Mayor

withdraws support for City Council candidate.”

I began to read this story expecting to gain some insight from

Mayor David Laurell. What I found was that he had “personally made

the decision that, while Brain [Malone’s] dedication to our community

is in no way to be questioned, I have weighed his ideas, opinions,

experience and knowledge of issues and can no longer support his

candidacy for a seat on the City Council.”

I had to run and find the last “Brian Malone for Council” flier

that I received, just to make sure my memory of Laurell placed in a

prominent position on it served me correctly. Now, after the primary

election, I am finding out that Laurell can no longer support this

candidate. Huh?

I think that a safe assumption can be made here. Laurell had hopes

that his endorsement would help Malone win a council seat in the

primary election. If that had occurred, would Laurell have come clean

to the voters and admitted that he had endorsed a candidate without

first finding out his opinions, ideas or knowledge?

My intention here is neither to support nor detract from the

candidacy of Malone; it’s a question of the reliability of a mayor’s

endorsement that is the real point. Thinking back over the past few

years, I really should not be at all surprised that Laurell would

either seek to deceive voters through his most recent endorsement or,

at the least, simply not bother to find out any facts before

endorsing a candidate for City Council. It would seem to me that

questions about the ideas, knowledge and experience are rather

fundamental to an endorsement. So what was really behind the

endorsement in the first place? Now that Laurell has done his

endorsement flip-flop, there is one burning question in my mind: Will

the remaining candidates run from a mayor’s endorsement like the

plague it has become, or will they all seek it, knowing full well

that their ideas, knowledge and opinions really don’t matter at all?

DAVID PIROLI

Burbank