Parks voter registration questioned
California Faultline, the political blog of KNBC, is reporting another dustup between the campaigns of Councilman Bernard Parks and state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas.
The two who are competing for the seat on the Board of Supervisors being vacated by Supervisor Yvonne Burke, have been engaged in a hotly contested race, with a series of charges and counter-charges.
The most recent involve Parks, who registered twice with the American Independent Party, an apparent mistake when he meant to register as decline to state. Officials with the AIP estimate up to one-third of their registered voters did so by mistake.
Here is the complete blog item and the link to the voter registration forms is here: California Faultline.:
Parks registered twice with American Independent Party, but party's chairman says 1/3rd of members may have have joined mistakenly.
Bernard Parks, Jr., told me his father did this at the direction of the Registrars office, was clearly attempting to register only as an independent, and the elder Parks had never even heard of the American Independent Party until last Friday.
On the first document, from 1992, Parks does check off "American Independent Party," but below it writes in "Independent." The form from 1996 only has "American Independent Party" checked off, but offers no other field to write in the party."
For the full item, go to ">California Faultline.
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The Los Angeles Daily News' City Hall reporters Rick Orlov and Kerry Cavanaugh write about politics on the local, state and national stage.
Whether Bernard Parks is telling the truth when he says (to paraphrase) the county Registrar-Recorder told him to do it [when he registered with the American Independent Party in 1992 and '96] I'll never know.
Did he make an innocent mistake? I don't know. It's possible.
But if that's the case, why does Parks place blame on the Registrar (as if R-R staff were guiding his pen at the time he changed his registration)? The answer seems to be pretty simple.
Parks doesn't want to admit he made a mistake... any mistake... whether it's innocent, boneheaded or otherwise. So, instead of owning up to making a mistake, Parks claims he "did this [register and re-register AIP] at the direction of the Registrar's office."
We're never going to know what really happened in '92 when Parks checked that AIP box and signed his name on the form to his change of voter registration. I suppose you can believe the Registrar forgot or failed to explain the meaning and significance of DTS voter registration to Parks when he asked for advice on changing his registration (if he actually asked for advice when he made his affirmative decision to leave the Democratic Party) back in those days.
But it does make you wonder.
What we do know is this: Parks has been claiming he is a "lifelong Democrat" (see attachments) and that he has been "a Democrat since he turned 18 in 1962."
Both of those statements by Parks are categorically untrue. The evidence of that untruth is plain to see in Parks' own change of voter registration documents.
It just makes you wonder, so you have ask:
If you know you changed your voter registration to leave the Democratic Party and you know that change lasted for 10-years, and you know there are certified voter registration documents with your signature on them that prove that fact... why make the claim you're a lifelong Democrat and keep repeating that claim when you, of all people, know it isn't true?
Why not just tell the truth?
Like I said, it just makes you wonder... about a whole lot of claims he's making.
Funny, though, you don't hear him claiming that the $21,000 he accepted from MTA contractors, their employees and family members over the past year are perfectly legal. You don't hear him claiming that he's paid back that $100,000 printing credit (or unlawful campaign loan) from Helen Mars while she dumps $50,000 into an I.E. campaign on his behalf.
I guess we're just supposed to believe that a "lifelong Democrat" would always tell the truth about those issues too.