New candidate, old trick
By Josh Richman
Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 2:39 pm in 2010 election, Alameda County.
Alameda County Superior Court candidate Louis Goodman’s website, as well as his direct-mail piece that’s hitting mailboxes all over the county, offer up the following quotes:
It sounds like quite a cavalcade of media endorsements, until you realize that all these quotes came from the same endorsement editorial which was published in all of the papers, all of which are part of the Bay Area News Group – East Bay. What Goodman made to look like five endorsements is actually just one.
He’s certainly not the first to pull this stunt; I wrote about Wilma Chan doing the same thing two years ago as she ran in a Democratic state Senate primary. It still smells pretty funny, though.
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May 21st, 2010 at 3:57 pm
So, then, why do you continue to pretend there are five different newspapers? It is really one paper with separate editions for different communities, all based in Walnut Creek.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Yes, we’re commonly owned and operated, but each paper retains its own staff (albeit shrinking ones in recent years) of reporters covering local issues. This one editorial, however, ran in all of the Alameda County papers.
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I would have expected that someone seeking to be a judge would not stoop to political sleight-of-hand deception. Aren’t judges supposed to represent truth and honesty?
—Jacob Needleman
Prof. of Philosophy,emeritus
San Francisco State University
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:04 pm
I agree with Dr. Needleman; such deliberate mis-representation calls into question this candidate’s character.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:01 am
didn’t the words appear in each of the five newspapers? I think they did. What’s wrong with a candidate tooting his horn during election season?
May 23rd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
You have to appreciate the effort. If it is the same editorial board that writes for each paper then it is proper to say that it is the endorsement of 5 different papers after all they could have had the opportunity to write different perspectives for each of their papers audiences. The person for Livermore might not be the best person for Walnut Creek and so forth.
But if they used 5 different papers to say the same thing then it would be valid to say that the candidate was endorsed by 5 different papers.
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Your copy desk stinks. Does the slot-man edit all the stories by himself?
May 24th, 2010 at 10:22 am
This seems like a non-issue to me. If he’s sending this piece to someone in Fremont he’s going to want to include the Fremont Argus, if he’s sending it to someone in Oakland he’s going to want to include the Oakland Tribune, and if he’s sending it to someone in Hayward he’s going to want to include the Hayward Daily Review.
People care more about their local papers than they do about others and it isn’t his fault that Bay Area News Group – East Bay owns all these papers nor is it his fault that they decided to run identical endorsements. Should he have only included the Oakland Tribune when mailing to cities with local newspapers that had printed the same endorsement? Should he have paid exorbitantly more to print out separate mail pieces for each area he was mailing to? Seems to me the bigger problem here is that one company owns 32 different newspapers in California.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
What #8 JW said.
If we’re going to have elected judges, this is about the most harmless type of electioneering “deception” you might expect.
As retired SCOTUS Justice Sandra J. O’Connor has recently written, elected judges is a bad idea. They should be merit-based appointments made from a group of candidates named by an independent body, as is the case in most states. Voters can have their say on a “yes/no” basis when the judicial term is up for renewal. But we shouldn’t have prospective judges campaigning for election, or interest groups waging campaigns on their behalf.
May 27th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
all I wanted to learn about was his record. why can’t we find that easily? I don’t want to vote for someone who lets illegal aliens commit horrendous crimes and go free. Does this lawyer defend illegals? I don’t want to vote for someone who thinks an illegal has the rights of a US citizen. The rights of illegals VS American citizens is a big issue in our nation today. Why can’t we learn about the people this guy has defended. Illegals? Drug dealers? Teachers who abuse their students? I don’t know if he has done this or not. I would like to know that.