A good rule of thumb: a candidate who thinks that voters are gullible would try to cheat them once elected.
Young Kim, who happily complied with orders from the Ed Royce machine to hire Dishonest Dave Gilliard (whose slogan could be “lie now, fail to explain later”), thinks that she can fool you into thinking that the AD-65 election is about Prop 13.
It isn’t. Sharon Quirk-Silva has never opposed Prop 13. It’s a desperate, bald-faced lie, designed to appeal to a public that simply does not expect their local politicians to lie that brazenly.
Go ahead — go online and try to find what Quirk-Silva supposedly did to oppose Prop 13. I’ve tried. There’s no coherent story there. It’s a lie made up to get a knee-jerk reaction out of people in the district — people who, if they think for a moment, will realize that they’ve never heard Sharon oppose Prop 13. Then the question becomes: how do they feel about being lied to — repeatedly — by paid actors reading scripts on TV?
It’s discomforting to imagine, so people resist recognizing what’s happening. And political consultants like Dishonest Dave Gilliard routinely take advantage of that misplaced trust.
So by drumming up the false issue of supporting Prop 13, Young Kim is trying to distract you from what the election is really about:
- Competence
The state’s political leadership, from the Governor on down, just loves Sharon Quirk-Silva. She’s not only congenial; she’s fiercely competent. That means that North Orange County can get some good treatment from the state government, for once. Quirk-Silva’s bravura performance in getting the Veterans Cemetery bill passed and signed is the sort of thing that Orange County just isn’t used to seeing in its state legislative leaders. Young Kim shows no sign of competence — or, much of the time, even of coherence. Yes, she can pay people to write her some passable stuff — but that’s not going to help her when she’s in a room negotiating with other legislators. Then, the word that one keeps hearing about her — “LIGHTWEIGHT” — will come back to haunt both her and her district.
- Trustworthiness
Because I got involved behind the scenes in the efforts to create Veterans Cemetery in Irvine’s Great Park last December, and then more openly and earnestly in late January, I’ve focused a lot on that issue. And that’s why, when I saw a particular Young Kim mailer, I almost wanted to throw up.
Talk, they say, is cheap — and it doesn’t get much cheaper than this sort of flimsy knock-off.
Young Kim wants to look good to voters by complimenting and making a show of valuing veterans. The sentiment in her letter is shallow and perfunctory — but, if that’s the best she can come up with, it wouldn’t be such a problem if it were honest.
But here’s the truth: one of the biggest problems that veterans have in this country is the tendency of government to make promises to them that it doesn’t deliver. Some of those involve adequate benefits and services — especially for veterans who have trouble readjusting to civilian life and, for example, end up homeless — but it goes well beyond that. Keeping out work to veterans costs us something, and having made commitments it is society’s responsibility to follow through. What Kim dishes up here is cheap compliments — “the greatest men and women anywhere in the world” — that our immediately belied by her failure to treat them as if she believes this is true.
The big political issue in Orange County over this past year has addressed dignity more than social services: the absence of a veterans cemetery in a county of three million people, leaving veterans with the choice of being buried far away where their families will not visit them or not being able to cash yet another of the promissory notes that they were given.
Sharon Quirk-Silva worked like a master legislator to make that happen, over the opposition of a powerful Irvine developer that forsook that land but now wants to control what happens there. And, when few thought that it was possible, she prevailed — it making good on a tangible promise to the people that Kim thinks she can shine on with sweet-talk and blather.
Kim isn’t to be held to the same standard as Quirk-Silva; she wasn’t a legislator this past year. But there’s one thing — if she believes that these are “the greatest men and women anywhere in the world” — that she could have done: shown some leadership within the Asian American community in support of the cemetery. That’s where a lot of the opposition, due to cultural taboos, has been located — and she could have claimed a good share of credit for passing the proposal through the primary stumbling block of the Irvine City Council is she had been willing.
Instead, Kim has not even publicly endorsed the idea of the veterans cemetery in the Great Park — the only place in Orange County where it seems to be reasonably likely! And some of her supporters have been at the forefront of the move to repeal the approval of the land donation.
Worse, when people have asked her point blank for her position on the issue, she has told veterans to their face that she supported it while telling others that she opposed it!
That’s a matter of character. Sharon Quirk-Silva has shown that she has it; Young Kim has shown that she doesn’t — that she’ll tell people what she thinks they want to hear, tell veterans how great they are, but not come through for them when the chips are down.
She has the makings of a horrible legislative representative — and the question for the 65th District, scared by the fake threat being made to the existence of Prop 13, is whether they are willing to let her lie her way into office. Because if she does things this bad before she’s elected, she’ll do worse once she has the power.
Don’t trust someone who gins up fake issues to obscure real ones.
“Sharon Quirk-Silva has never opposed Prop 13”
And Lou Correa promised to not vote to raise taxes …….
And skallywag strikes what he hopes is a killing blow against the very idea of evidence as opposed to fantasy….
Not evidence – just a recent relevant example of how dem legislators are not trustworthy when it comes to promises concerning tax issues.
That’s like my using the example of that Congressman in Florida to raise concern that a Republican legislator may buy cocaine on the street.
You’re right — it’s not evidence. And you’re wrong — it’s not relevant.
Are taxes more likely to be raised with or without a dem super-majority in the Assembly? Yes or no answer please …..
This is a great and accurate article. If only it was posted weeks ago. Young Kim spent her whole campaign manipulating voters who don’t do the research themselves. Really sad.Not to mention that she is a carpetbagger, and lied about being a small businesswoman on the ballot, with her fake business YK connections…. But what else do you expect from someone whos only experience was working for a congressman for 20+ years..