In a letter published at the Voice of San Diego yesterday, candidate Loch David Crane has announced that he has withdrawn from the San Diego mayoral race. He states that despite physical problems that made it difficult for him to campaign he gave it his best effort because no one else spoke out to defend legal medical marijuana patients. I applaud him for taking a stance and wish him the best with his endeavors and hope his physical condition improves.
However, in his letter to Voice of San Diego he misguidedly attacks the labor council,
I was given an invitation to their event at your exciting Politifest on the 17th of September. After calling for weeks to verify speaking time limits, President Lorena Gonzalez’s rude employees today said I was not invited as a candidate, although I am registered with the city and Sacramento. I believe The San Diego Labor Council is pandering to the “Big 4 Spenders,” lying about who all the candidates are, concealing 10 or more legal candidates, and refusing to invite all legal candidates. Where are the Ethics Commissions now, I challenge you?
The San Diego Labor Council apparently believes in misleading the public, concealing legal candidates, withdrawing invitations, and lying to people about the election. That sucks. There are in fact 14 legal candidates — well, 13 now — and lying about them is bigotry. Look up the DEFINITION OF BIGOT: “a person who is prejudiced in [his or her] views and intolerant of the opinions of others.”
He is referring to an invitation to the event organized by the coalition “A Better San Diego,” of which I am a member. We have been in the process of organizing this event for the last 6 weeks through weekly meetings and communication via email. One of the major decisions we made as a group was whether or not to include all the candidates. Considering the venue and the time constraints (90 minutes) that we had to deal with we voted on how many candidates we could accommodate and who they would be. And for the record, Lorena Gonzalez was the one to plead the case for inviting Mr. Crane and all the other candidates!
We recognize that there are many hard working people campaigning for mayor but before Mr. Crane starts accusing people of bigotry he should be aware of who was behind this decision. The people involved in this coalition come from a very diverse group; construction workers, nurses, taxi cab drivers, domestic workers, retired people to name a few… many of them face bigotry every day and are who he would be representing if he had been elected.
I understand that his physical problems made it difficult for him to continue his campaign, but smearing the labor council and Lorena Gonzalez who have worked very hard to reach out to the community and try to heal the rift between labor and the public doesn’t help his credibility.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The GOP lie machine has done a good job of repeating the meme that labor is evil, using random factoids from the past and playing on bias left over from 50 years ago. Obviously Mr Crane has had a health swig of the kool-ade; it’s probably the same batch that infected him with his anti-immigrant rants.
I, for one, am glad he’s out of the race. He was embarrassing to listen to.
Is the bigotry angle hinting that perhaps he feels his anti-illegal immigration stance had caused Ms. Gonzales to have been a factor in his exclusion?
That’s the only thing that makes sense, wrong as it would be.
Looking at his responses in the letters section leaves me feeling he often has a, well, cough cough ahem, unique way of interpreting situations.
Don’t you miss the good old days when the U-T told us who was running and who we should vote for? Let’s see, there’s Republicans, and then there’s the GOP, oh wait we also have this conservative guy here, okay guess that’s all of them.
Move along, nothing to see here.