Memo To Board of Supes: Don't Send The Letter

Peggy Lowe over at Total Buzz posts about Supervisor Lou Correa's letter to his board colleagues, in which he requests the BOS direct the OC Registrar of Voters to send a clarification letter to the 14,000 recipients of the "immigrants can't vote" letter and outlines what he wants the letter to say.

Last week, the Secretary of State pledged last week to send out a clarification letter to those same 14,000 people. In fact, according to Total Buzz, those clarification letters will go out tomorrow or Wednesday. In other words, clarification letters will be mailed out even as the Board of Supervisors considers Lou Correa's request to send out clarification letters.

Correa's request is redundant and a waste of taxpayer resources. I'm on record as supporting a clarification letter. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has already taken care of it.

At this point, Correa's request becomes a taxpayer-funded GOTV letter to Latino Democrats. The "immigrants can't vote" letter has been the subject of daily news coverage for an entire week, and the appropriate government agency is already sending a letter. There is no legitimate public policy rationale for instructing the ROV to send a second letter -- inly a partisan reason.

Lou Correa's request is obviously self-interested. He's locked in a tight race with Lynn Daucher and very much needs wants a solid Latino Democrat turn out on election day.

That's fine -- but he shouldn't ask taxpayers to foot the bill for it. The state Senate Democrats have millions of dollars, and can easily spare a few thousand to mail to those 14,000 voters -- and they probably already have.

I hope the other four supervisors will have the nerve to withstand the Democrats' purely self-interested calls to send out this letter. They should keep in mind that the OC Democratic Party already attempted to use this incident to buffalo the county into paying for a GOTV letter to every Latino Democrat in Orange County. In this case, their cries of "Protect The Vote" are a smokescreen for having taxpayers pay to "Get Out The Democratic Vote."

Supervisors, don't be well-intentioned shills for the Orange County Democratic Party. Vote down Supervisor Correa's request.

Comments

[Irvine GOPer]

This is a really, really stupid idea. The SOS letter is more than enough. Why should taxpayers pay for a GOTV letter for central county Democrats?

[Mark Leyes]

Jubal - It may be even worse than you suggest.

A letter from the County Registrar on County letterhead does amount to a democratic GOTV letter. But I believe the Dems already do plan to mail their own message, hoping to use the County letter to reinforce their message.

Furthermore I suspect that they would (will) use the County letter imagery reprinted in their mail as a hammer to all the Republican candidates, not just Tan Nguyen (see Phil Angelides' recent comments). I predict that they WILL use McPherson's letter anyway (it's just not as effective when they have to quote a Republican!).