The following information was released to the public on Tuesday from the City of Palmdale Communications Department, cityofpalmdale.org:
“Although we disagree with the ruling itself, we are pleased that a decision was finally made so we could move forward with our appeal,” said Assistant City Attorney Noel Doran. “The City of Palmdale is committed to protecting its citizens’ constitutional right to determine the manner and method of electing their city leaders.”
The tentative ruling ordered Palmdale to hold a special election coinciding with statewide primaries June 3. The City disagrees with the decision and will appeal when the preliminary ruling becomes official in about 10 days.
Palmdale’s last election, which took place on Nov. 5, saw the re-elections of Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford and Councilmember Tom Lackey, as well as the election of new Councilmember Frederick Thompson. Thompson, a retired community college dean who formerly served on the Palmdale Planning Commission and Palmdale School District board, became the first African-American to win a City Council seat, but not the first minority candidate, to win a citywide election.
“Plaintiff’s R. Rex Parris and Kevin Shenkman have certainly changed their tune since Frederic Thompson won a Council seat in Palmdale’s November at-large election,” said Palmdale’s Communications Manager John Mlynar. “When they filed their complaint back in April 2012, they claimed that no Latino or African American has ever been elected to Palmdale’s City Council, nor has any candidate of choice of Latino or African American voters been elected to the Palmdale City Council.’ They said it revealed ‘a lack of access to the political process.’ Now that Mr. Thompson’s election destroyed their misguided theories by winning, they’re changing their spin and are now saying ‘it’s not really about the complexion of the candidate, it’s about giving minority voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, regardless of the skin color of that candidate.’ In reality, who can make that choice better than the voters themselves, which they did on Nov. 5?”
“The citizens of Palmdale didn’t vote for me because of or, in spite of, the color of my skin – or theirs,” Thompson said. “They voted for me for the same reasons they voted for me over thirty years ago: I understood the voters’ issues, I made myself known in the community, I had the support of other community leaders, I put the work in to get my message to the voters, and I ran an effective campaign. What part of that formula is this lawsuit trying to ‘fix?’”
“I understand the impulse to explain elections based on a single factor, in this case race, but you can’t do that in Palmdale,” added Thompson. “You certainly can’t explain our recent elections in Palmdale using race. In the race for Palmdale School District you had white candidates both win and lose, you had Hispanic candidates both win and lose. You had African-Americans elected to both the City Council and the Palmdale School Board.”
“The voting rights lawsuit gives the impression this is a racist community, and it is not. There isn’t a neighborhood in Palmdale that you can drive into that isn’t integrated,” Thompson said.
“It’s ironic, and frankly sad, that the plaintiffs’ attempts to stop the city’s at-large election has resulted in preventing an African-American from holding office,” Doran said. “A year ago, the plaintiffs trumpeted Mr. Thompson’s prior inability to get elected to the City Council as evidence that Latinos and African-Americans lacked access to the political process. Now that he’s been elected, they question whether or not he was the minority ‘candidate of choice.’”
“This latest change in position by the plaintiffs just shows what we’ve been saying all along—they’re not concerned about black, brown or white—it’s about green,” said Ledford. “They’re keeping the legal meter running and racking up huge attorney’s fees through a lawsuit without merit. They get rich while the taxpayer foots the bill. And they are taking their money grubbing show on the road in Santa Clarita and elsewhere, but curiously not in Parris’ own City of Lancaster which operates under the same at-large system as Palmdale.”
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Check out other news stories regarding Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney’s decision to scrap Palmdale’s at-large elections at dailynews.com and the L.A. Times article compliments of this Facebook page.