EDITORIALS:

When Democratic Assemblyman Paul Krekorian announced his candidacy for Los Angeles City Council midway through his second term in Sacramento, we expected his detractors to have a field day, and they did.

Almost immediately, they responded with calls for his resignation, claiming he’d be a deadbeat representative for the Assembly’s 43rd District while pursuing Los Angeles’ District 2 seat.

Jane Barnett, chairwoman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, argued in her July 9 letter calling for Krekorian’s resignation that his announcement was likely nothing more than Paul taking care of Paul, a pursuit of “higher salary, less commute, bigger office and the ability to walk away from our state chaos he helped create.”

True, he would likely get all of those things should his run for Los Angeles City Council prove successful, but so what?

Politics is rarely a field in which the players consider reaching the 35-yard line a crowning accomplishment. It takes a certain amount of ego to believe you’re the best person to represent the interests of tens of thousands of people, no matter the district.

But voters should be turning their ire to term limits — the one that will end Krekorian’s time in the Assembly in short order — not the assemblyman. We seriously doubt he’d be attempting a jump to Los Angeles if there weren’t a sunset coming in Sacramento.

Outside of the tired Republican vs. Democrat politics, Krekorian has served his district well, pushing through a relatively large batch of legislative initiatives in his short time in office.

The calls for his resignation while he runs for L.A. City Council smack of the same political tussle that continues to cripple this state’s Legislature. If every elected official running for another office resigned for the campaign, we’d be crippled with myriad special elections — and left with the tab to prove it.