Make McCarthy pay for elections
Iagree with the headline of a recent Bakersfield Californian editorial, “Don’t stick local taxpayers with special election costs” (April 14). However, the paper’s own conclusion is at odds with that view.
The Californian wants the state of California to reimburse us.
To quote the editorial, that’s “just plain wrong.” Instead, the tab should be paid by the responsible party: Kevin McCarthy.
Asking California taxpayers (including those of us living in Kern County) to foot the bill is simply shifting the cost to a bigger pool of injured citizens. This harm should not be treated as an insurance claim. We need to punish the person who created this mess.
For those who do not remember me (probably most readers by now), I ran as an independent candidate against McCarthy for Congress in 2012.
So, if you think my views here are the result of sour grapes, just consider the facts.
In my Community Voices essay titled “Will McCarthy run for Congress or not?” (Nov. 25), I predicted that the congressman might use the same tactic as his predecessor had.
That would have left the door open for his hand-picked successor, Assemblyman Vince Fong, to run easily with little or no opposition.
But good old Kevin couldn’t even do that effectively.
When our ex-representative petulantly quit mid-term after his historic and humiliating ouster as House Speaker, he set off a chain reaction that, as The Californian editorial correctly noted, cost us an estimated $4 million.
He also left Fong in the lurch and our district in an electoral conundrum. Why should the culprit who perpetrated this unnecessary and expensive burden avoid responsibility for what he did?
By the way, will he continue to collect his annual six-figure pension, even after abruptly quitting the job to which he was elected? This taxpayer wants to know.
McCarthy made things worse by waiting until the last minute to announce his decision, thus plunging our district (and Congress) into chaos, and leaving us without representation in Washington.
One could argue that there is another blameworthy party: the Republican Party.
That dysfunctional organization no longer seems capable of exercising good fiduciary judgment.
Once upon a time, leaders of the Grand Old Party would have expressed outrage if taxpayers were stuck by the selfish misbehavior of a public officeholder.
These days, submitting to the cultish control of a former/future presidential nominee, politicians in the party of Lincoln show little regard for the public interest — only interested in holding onto power. They behave more like out of control children. Where are the adults?
We may also blame the courts for permitting an obvious injustice in the process of replacing the resigned representative.
To allow a politician to seek more than one office simultaneously is not only an absurd misinterpretation of the law, it opens the door to further such attempts.
Why not let someone run for every office on the ballot?
But what are we citizens to do? To paraphrase King Henry II, “Will no one rid us of these turbulent candidates, lawmakers and judges?”
I have a few not so modest proposals. First, I would invite a clever lawyer to file a class-action suit on behalf of us all to collect compensation for the actual damages we’ve incurred, and hefty punitive damages to discourage this behavior from happening again.
The newspaper’s editorial was also correct in condemning “ambitious politicians (who) jump from one office to the next to keep themselves employed.” That is a sin for which Democrats are as culpable as Republicans. Enough is enough.
We need strict term limits for all public officeholders in every branch and at all levels of government. Let’s change federal and state constitutions to eliminate the professional political class altogether. How about limiting politicians to only one term — period? While we’re at it, I’d like to get rid of all campaign contributions that are, let’s be honest here, simply a form of legalized bribery.
But returning to my original point … To quote The Californian: “Sticking counties and local taxpayers with special election costs is just plain wrong.” To which I would add: Make the guilty party pay.