To: San Diego Union-Tribune
From: Fran Zimmerman
Subject: Votes for Sale Editorial
Date: 10/13/02

Letter to the Editor:

1) When you take my name in vain, I would appreciate your using the formal three-word enchilada, none of this familiar diminutive "Fran Zimmerman" stuff that may confuse the reader with another Fran Zimmerman who lives in La Jolla.

2) When business moguls and developers give a million dollars to defeat one incumbent school board marm, you call it responsible civic leadership. When the California Teachers Association steps in to protect the interests of their 9,000 local teachers by contributing one-fifth that unprecedented sum to a school board race for two seats, you call it "Votes for Sale."

3) When Board member John deBeck's opponent Clyde Fuller takes thousands of dollars from the Republican Party to finance his Primary campaign, you fail to mention that School Board races are strictly non-partisan. And you are silent about Fuller taking many maximum contributions from builders, developers and realtors who presumably have their eyes on the prize of future school district business.

4) When candidate Jeff Lee's opponent lawyer Katherine Nakamura's name appears on your editorial page, you claim she is "conscientious" and "not beholden to the superintendent." When I read about her elsewhere, I learn that her architect husband has received millions of dollars in contracts to build San Diego Unified schools – a condition that in other cities is called a serious conflict of interest.

5) I submit that the real question is whether any San Diego voter going to the polls ever takes the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial page seriously as an honest source of full information. If today's work is any example, I doubt it.

Frances O'Neill Zimmerman
Board Member, San Diego City Schools