Video: Lucille Kring Speaks Common Sense on Single-Member Council Districts
Posted by Matt Cunningham on May 6, 2013
Anaheim Councilwoman Lucille Kring took the time to speak to next-to-last meeting of the Anaheim Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) on April 18. She gave the CAC members a brief and to-the-point tutorial on why she is opposed to single-member council districts.
Kring’s appeal to common sense employed reality to illuminate the down-side of single-member council districts and illustrate why they are not the solution that proponents contend they are:
OC Political 
the Pot Stirrer said
Matt, I’ve seen this link here for several days but always just scrolled past it because I don’t have a dog in the Anaheim hunt. Finally, this morning I decided to invest 3 minutes of my life to watch it because the subject of single member districts interests me – we don’t have that in Costa Mesa.
I watched it twice because I thought the first time around I must have missed something. Ms. Kring’s piece was disjointed and certainly didn’t live up to your billing. Nothing she said in her rambling monologue gave me a reason to not consider single member districts – quite the contrary. And, her math is off, too. She said, in the case of a five member council, you can’t talk to more than one other of your peers. Correct. She then said in the case of a 7 member council you couldn’t talk to more than one – incorrect. Three members can have a conversation because it takes 4 to constitute a majority.
If you feel this is a good example of communication, then I’m beginning to understand why MY GOP is in trouble.
Matthew Cunningham said
Her point is that single-member districts breed division and disfunction and parochialism, which is true.
The coalition pushing single-member district in Anaheim has been unable to muster intellectually coherent arguments in their favor. It has been a power play from the very beginning. Their goal is to re-structure how the council is elected in order to elect liberals to the council who will support liberal policies. It is really that simple.
the Pot Stirrer said
I’m a simple guy so I get that, and, in Anaheim it might be true. My closest point of reference is Newport Beach – which she specifically mentions. My neighbors over there seem to have no problems with their single-member districts. Granted, you can probably count the liberals on one hand in Newport, so it’s not an apples and apples comparison. My point was that her “argument” was lame, disjointed and poorly delivered.
Cynthia Ward said
Pot Stirrer, the reason for Kring’s less-than-stellar performance was that the argument was spoon fed to her by the power structure desperate to retain their stranglehold on Anaheim leadership. If Kring seems unfamiliar with her position it is because it is brand new to her, having just been indoctrinated by those who are working to pay off her old campaign debts. As recently as within the last 2 months Lucille Kring was at a Los Amigos meeting. where she told the assembled crowd of about 50 people (including me, having never attended before I figured if Lucille can go I can go) she made a vocal argument in FAVOR of the District Elections. It is a position she also took publicly at the August 8, 2012 Council Meeting, where her support for District Elections was recorded in the Minutes during Public Comments (she was merely a candidate then) and the video of Public Comments shows her public declaration of support for District Elections prior to a comment about the need to get cops out of their cars and face to face with the residents. But suddenly the Masters of the Universe start paying off her debts and she does a miraculous turn-around…while unable to clearly articulate what it is she supports or why. Surprise!
So much for the independent voice we supported for Council. No,I don’t hate her, nor am I here to attack her (just pointing out the hypocrisy), Lucille is who she is, we know it from years of experience, and I am mostly just frustrated with myself for buying what she was selling. On the other hand we were rather limited in our choice of candidates. So we backed her and hoped for the best. Trust her again? Oh shame on me….Meanwhile the keyboards-for-hire like Matt Cunningham will applaud “community leaders” who will arrive for Tuesday’s Council meeting with their prepared statements from slick Sacramento consultants, carefully removing SOAR or Chamber letterhead logos from the handouts filled with pro-establishment talking points-and will then go on to bash any other community group as “scripted” and “staged” in trying to share information with residents.
Why is the establishment so afraid of District Elections that they refuse to even allow the public to vote on whether we want them? Well for one thing, it brings government down to a more human scale, as Michael Capaldi pointed out it fits the Republican desire for smaller, more responsive government. But the last thing in the world these “Republicans” in Anaheim want is smaller government, no they want BIG government, sucking through Federal tax dollars, funneled through their unelected NGOs so they can feed it into the trough of their corporate buddies, who in turn keep them in office with so much money fueling the campaigns that little guys cannot compete. It is a sick, and dysfunctional. circle of self-interest. No, District Elections are far from perfect, there are many, many flaws to the system, including the territorial bickering that comes with carving us into “yours” and “mine”. For a long time I opposed them, so it is no surprise if the opposition posts video of me bashing the idea. But over time I have come to realize that District Elections can do one thing that no other system does-give the little guy with small funds but a heart of gold a small and accessible area in which to bring his campaign directly to the voters, door to door if need be. While we will never remove big money from Anaheim campaigns, it is ONLY Districts that offer even the smallest glimmer of hope that neighborhood oriented Districts could at least be covered by volunteers, possibly offering a viable alternative to the corporate interests who stuff mailboxes in a City too geographically large to cover in a grassroots campaign. That, my friends, is what terrifies the crony capitalists. Because deep down inside they know that given the choice between an ethical, decent human being standing on the porch asking for a vote and offering a well-articulated plan for bringing back our neighborhoods, vs the phony smile of a professional politician on an expensive glossy mailer, the public just might reject the corporate candidates for the first time in recent Anaheim memory, and that scares them worse than a union work stoppage at Disneyland on Memorial Day weekend.
the Pot Stirrer said
Thanks for that, Cynthia. As I said earlier, I have no dog in the Anaheim hunt, but Matt’s touting the video clip as a great articulation of the anti-district elections issue seemed curious, since her performance is so lame. I’ve seen similar performances by Allan Mansoor when “the boys” got their hooks into him. The poor guy has a hard time articulating his thoughts and clearly is an ineffective Assemblyman. He’s had one bill passed – the one that removed “retarded” from the official Sacramento lexicon – and who’s going to vote agains that?! Thanks, again, for a view much more proximate to the issue than mine.
Jason Young said
Why didn’t Matt post the video form the 8-8-12 meeting in which Kring came out in support of districting? Furthermore, why is OC Political allowing a paid political hack to post here? We have evidence that the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce funds his AnaheimBlog.net
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