Aiming low
City Council District 3 race degenerates into name-calling contest
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/aiming_low/11896/
By Andre Coleman, February 21, 2013
With less than two weeks to go before the March 5 election,
candidates for the City Council’s District 3 seat are pulling out their
big guns — pardon the pun — to take over for former Councilman Chris
Holden, who in November was elected to the state Assembly.
The
“big guns” metaphor, though perhaps a little tasteless to some, seems
appropriate enough, considering all three candidates — John J. Kennedy,
Ishmael Trone and the Rev. Nicholas Benson — all own weapons, and two of
the three men faced gun-related criminal charges, with Kennedy being
acquitted of attempted murder after shooting a man accidentally in 1993,
and Trone pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges after being stopped at
Bob Hope Airport while trying to get on a plane with a loaded handgun
in his bag.
But instead of talking about gun violence, like
longtime District 3 resident Mae Gentry wants them to do, the candidates
are using their remaining campaign time to smear one another.
“I
wish they would talk about the issues,” said Gentry, a onetime
journalist with the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “When I started
looking into the other candidates in the race, I thought I wouldn’t want
to vote for any of these guys. We can do better, but I am still going
to vote.”
Benson essentially quit campaigning after the Pasadena
Weekly reported two weeks ago that he did not attend either USC or
Fuller Theological Seminary, as he had claimed, and that he goes by a
number of different names besides Benson. He also routinely uses
different birth dates.
Trone, too, has seen his share of
controversy, with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office
investigating complaints that he does not live in the district, at the
headquarters of a bail bonds company he owns on East Orange Grove
Boulevard, but really resides in Altadena, at a home that he owns along
with his estranged wife, Juanita. Trone has emphatically denied the
claim.
But just when it seemed as though the campaign could not go
any lower, an anonymous flier started appearing in mailboxes and on
emails last week, raising questions about Kennedy’s sexuality. Lena
Kennedy, the candidate’s sister and campaign manager, called the attacks
“sinful.”
“Isn’t it amazing that a man who values women, and is
not running through women while he is single, is being lied about
instead of being looked up to because he is honoring the example of our
father, who waited to find the right woman,” Lena Kennedy said. “John
stands for the way our parents raised us, which was to value yourself
and other people. This sleazy type of campaigning is not who we are.
This is not what our city represents.”
Lena Kennedy was referring
to a lengthy article published in 1995 in the Richmond-Times Dispatch
detailing Kennedy’s arrest — and subsequent acquittal — regarding the
1993 shooting of Jonathan Thomas in Northwest Pasadena.
In 1995,
Kennedy followed former Pasadena Police Chief Jerry Oliver to Richmond,
Va., where Oliver took as over as chief and Kennedy became deputy chief.
Two years prior to that, the Virginia newspaper reported, Kennedy said
he was mentoring Thomas, who was 20 at the time.
“The Trone
campaign is spreading innuendo by posting that article,” Lena Kennedy
said. “We wish they would talk about the issues.”
According to the
article, which quotes Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Nancy
Naftel, Thomas told Kennedy he would not be sleeping at Kennedy’s home
because he was planning to spend that night with his girlfriend. Kennedy
then asked Thomas for a .22-caliber handgun that
Thomas had previously
shown him and had brought into the car they were driving in. Kennedy
then pointed the gun at Thomas’ stomach and pulled the trigger. The gun
didn’t go off, but the trigger action slid the lone round left in the
gun’s magazine into the chamber of the weapon. When Kennedy pulled the
trigger again, the gun went off, the bullet ripping into Thomas’ lower
abdomen. Kennedy described his actions as innocent horseplay gone awry.
Kennedy,
who testified that he did not know the gun was loaded, drove Thomas to
Huntington Hospital, where surgeons saved his life. Kennedy was later
acquitted of three felony charges. The jury deadlocked on two
misdemeanor offenses, which were dismissed after Naftel decided not to
retry Kennedy, who prior to the incident served as president of the
NAACP Pasadena Branch.
Kennedy, now an executive with the Los
Angeles Urban League, claims he had been mentoring Thomas for about five
years by the time of the shooting. He said he often gave Thomas money,
food and a place to stay.
Naftel points out in the article that it
would not have been unusual for Kennedy to mentor a young man in the
community. Several other prominent local African-Americans have mentored
young men, including NAACP President Joe Brown.
“We have always
tried to specialize and focus on what we could do with the young men in
our community,” Brown told the Weekly. “That is part of the core
requirement and specialization of the NAACP, and John has always
exhibited that leadership quality.”
Brown has not endorsed either Kennedy or Trone for Holden’s seat.
Kennedy was hesitant to discuss the shooting when interviewed by the Weekly. Thomas died several years ago.
Copies
of that article were also posted on electjjkennedy.com, and links to
the article were posted on Kennedy’s Facebook page. Those links were
removed shortly after they appeared. Hard copies of the article were
sent to several churches in Altadena and Pasadena, as well as to several
Kennedy donors, according to the candidate’s sister.
Trone, who
is backed by Holden, told the Weekly on Monday that he was not behind
the anti-Kennedy Web site and had no idea who posted the article.
“I
am not even aware of it,” Trone told the Weekly. “I received a copy of
the Richmond article in the mail with no return address. I have no
knowledge of the Web site. This is the first time I have heard of this.”
The article has prompted the Kennedy campaign to respond with a counter mass mailing to 3,200 District 3 residents.
“An
anonymous campaign mailer, with no return address, but with first-class
postage, is the latest effort in a not-so-subtle smear campaign against
me,” Kennedy wrote in the rebuttal. Just as he declined to address
questions regarding the shooting with the Weekly, Kennedy also declined
to address the issue in his mailer.
“Several decades ago, I was
accused — accused, nothing else — of wrongdoing. I put my faith in our
justice system, and I was completely acquitted. Nevertheless, my
opponent keeps misleading voters — you — with scurrilous rumor and
innuendo.”
Kennedy’s mailer also contains a picture of Trone taken
by the Weekly — and used without the paper’s permission — with the
words “Shame on you” stamped across the front and the word “campaigning”
misspelled. The Weekly has not yet endorsed a candidate in the race.
“I
am running to represent you at City Hall, to continue my family’s proud
and enduring legacy of service to our country and community,” Kennedy
wrote. “I do not — and will not — engage in smear campaigns but,
equally, I will not deny any part of my past — because I have nothing to
be ashamed of or hide.”
No, the traffic is not so bad in Pasadena, but Metro would lead one to believe that if they could.
The 710 Coalition is the fake grassroots group of two (Harry Baldwin and his daughter, Kendall Flint, who lives in Half Moon Bay, CA). They are lobbyists for the pro-710 folks.
The cities of Pasadena, La Canada-Flintridge, Glendale, South Pasadena, and if I'm not mistaken, Sierra Madre, are forming a coalition of cities to collectively conduct their own study of the effects of this 710 tunnel boondoggle.
I can see where the word "coalition" used for both is confusing. 710 Coalition is a formal name for the fake grassroots folks. The coalition of the affected foothill cities is the forming of a partnership in the study.
In actuality, the 710 tunnel will impede the businesses of Pasadena, especially those in Old Town, and the parade route will be disrupted. We as Pasadena citizens opposing the 710 have no intention of throwing any of our neighboring cities under the bus (no pun intended). We are watching our elected council members closely and holding them to task.
There will be a community forum regarding the tunnel issue in La Crescenta on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Rosemont Middle School Cafeteria, 4725 Rosemont Ave., La Crescenta. This forum is structured to answer questions of those who are just becoming aware and want the facts. I would like to invite anyone in Sierra Madre who wishes to attend. This meeting is easy to find. It is not far from the 210.