The latest “Soapbox” page in the Dana Point News provides a nice little study in contrasts. The bulk of the page goes to a column from Joel Bishop, Dana Point's jolly, Twittering councilman. He's all about “the power of collaboration”: “I get weary of people in power blaming one another for problems and issues instead of grabbing the horns of the dilemma, and collaboratively fixing them.”
To illustrate the “power of collaboration,” Bishop offers quotes from Ronald Reagan and Washington's centrist senator, Olympia Snowe. He writes that even though he supported the 241 Toll Road extension, Bishop overcame that bias by awarding the Mayor's Trophy to Surfrider, the toll-road killing environmental group. And he points to a few recent projects in the city — a noise ordinance, the town center plan, the headlands community — as examples of how opposing interests can come together in compromise. “Dana Point gets it,” Bishop writes.
And then, below Bishop's column, we see a letter to the editor that begins thusly: “Diane Harkey is a political liar.”
Predictably, it's a letter from Jim Lacy, a former city councilman who happens to hate State Assemblywoman Diane Harkey with a burning passion. Lacy knows a thing or two about political liars: His trade is defaming other politicians surreptitiously, as documented here, here and here. There's nothing surreptitious about his DPT letter, though. He's calling out Harkey, a former Dana Point council member, for flip flopping on last week's special election ballot propositions. She penned a column for the Dana Point News in May recommending a “no” vote across the board, but didn't reconcile that with an ealier article for the North County Times in San Diego in which she recommended “yes” on all but Prop 1A and 1B.
Lacy thinks the discrepancy is because Harkey is pandering to red voters in Dana Point and blue ones in San Diego county. “If she had any character she should be ashamed of this political ruse,” Lacy writes. “As the saying goes, 'Wake Up Dana Point!'”
Hooray for cooperation!
