Congressional candidate Kuykendall claims opponent DeLong fails on public safety issue

Steve Kuykendall Launches Attack Campaign Against Gary Delong For West OC Congressional Seat
Dolores Barr, Editor and Publisher, OC180NEWS.com
Published 03/11/2012 – 2:07 p.m. Pacific Time
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Dolores Barr, Editor an…
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Just in case you haven’t been keeping up on current events, if you live in Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, or several other local areas, Ed Royce is not going to be your new Congressman. But, either Steve Kuykendall, or Gary DeLong might be your new man in the nation’s capitol.

The two Long Beach Republicans, plus Long Beach Democrat Alan Lowenthal, are running in California’s June 5, Primary election to represent the 47th Congressional District. The new 47th CD was created by last year’s redistricting and combines Long Beach with Rossmoor, Los Alamitos, Cypress, Garden Grove, Stanton, and Westminster.

Compared to the presidential race, until yesterday, the campaign for the 47th CD was pretty gentlemanly. That all changed with an email blast sent out yesterday by Steve Kuykendall.

At OC180NEWS we try our best to avoid taking positions on political issues or candidates, and we do not endorse Gary DeLong, or anybody else. Rather, we like to bring our readers what the candidates say or write, and let their words speak for them. We also believe that inflammatory words without supporting details are nothing more than an attempt to misinform or mislead the voters.

So it was, that when we received Kuykendall’s email attack on Gary DeLong, the first thing we did was to ask for supporting details and who we could interview to get clarification on the allegations. The second thing we did was to ask Gary DeLong for his reaction. DeLong responded, Kuykendall did not.

Without supporting details, we consider Kuykendall’s allegations to be meaningless and the attacking comments to be baseless. The simple fact that Kuykendall would distribute such a message, and then not be available to support it, is, in our opinion, nothing more than a groundless attempt to get media attention.

For example, the subject line of Kuykendall’s message was “Gary DeLong Fails Most Important Job”. Kuykendall’s email also includes this introduction:
“Neighborhood Safety is Job One for Every Elected Official. At the local level that is your police and fire protection. Councilman Gary Delong wants your vote to send him to Congress where these decisions are how we defend this nation and our interests around the world. Councilman Delong has not shown anyleadership in this area and now wants to be promoted.”

Since Gary DeLong is a sitting Long Beach City Councilman, the question of his leadership certainly is relevant. Kuykendall supports his allegation that DeLong lacks leadership by equating this with an alleged inadequacy of Long Beach’s police and fire protection. Specifically, Kuykendall lists the following as support:
1. ”The shortage of fire fighters to fill positions going vacant and police officers, in the face of double-digit increases in crime.”
2. “We have cut fire and police positions.”
3. “Our police forces have been declining for several years.”
4. “The City doesn’t even have a certified police academy any longer to train new officers.”
With regard to item 1 above, of course, the process of balancing Long Beach’s city budget is a bit more complicated than Kuykendall suggests. It is the easiest thing in the world to pull out police and fire protection and complain it is underfunded.

“As Chair of the Budget Oversight Committee, I’ve led the effort to balance the budget, every year for the last 6 years,” DeLong told OC180NEWS. “Additionally, I’ve worked hard to reform our pension system in order to reduce costs and make it sustainable for the future.”

Next, with regard to the “double digit increase in crime, again, we did not receive from Steve Kuykendall any support for this allegation. Certainly crime is down in most cities across the country. But, statistics being as they are, it is possible Kuykendall might have come up with a statistic which shows otherwise, but since he couldn’t be bothered to send it to us, we could not consider it.

“He [Steve Kuykendall] also states that the City has had double-digit increases in crime, which is incorrect,” DeLong told OC180NEWS. “In fact, violent crime is at a 40 year low.”

As for Kuykendall’s support items 3 and 4 above (declines in police forces and the lack of a police academy), DeLong did not address these specific issues directly in his response to OC180NEWS.
“I’m proud of the outstanding work done by the men and women of our Police and Fire Departments,”
DeLong told OC180NEWS. “They are doing a terrific job under difficult economic conditions.”

One could infer from this comment that DeLong is acknowledging the accuracy of Kuykendall’s assertions. We do not know if the headcount for police and fire has decreased in Long Beach, but certainly the issue of a police academy is not of the same nature.

There are plenty of other places from which Long Beach could hire trained public safety personnel. In fact, with a well regarded program at Orange Coast College, it is pretty easy to imagine that it would not be cost effective for Long Beach to operate their own police academy.

Certainly, the absence of a police academy in Long Beach does not on the surface even remotely suggest a lack of, or a failure of DeLong’s leadership. If not having a police academy was a cost effective decision, that would have allowed Long Beach to fund more officers on the beat, not less.

“Like many families, government needs to learn how to ‘do more with less’,” DeLong said, “and live within our means.”

Finally, Steve Kuykendall’s message calls his alleged inadequate police and fire protection in Long Beach a “dereliction of duty supported by Councilman Gary Delong.” These are strong words to be sure. But, nothing is easier than strong words when not encumbered by facts, faced with budget tradeoffs, or actually governing.