Letter: Leadership should address election acrimony

Dear Editor:

I read today’s article covering former mayoral candidate Jeff Morris’ Christmas Day misdemeanor domestic violence case.  Thank you for the factual and impartial account.

To me, the details of what happened are largely a private matter.  Those will be handled by the courts; and in any case, cannot reveal what must be instead read between the lines:  the setting of the event; just after a nasty mayoral race where Jeff Morris and Cindy Cremona equally split the vote in opposition to Tony Kranz.  As a result, Kranz has now been seated with less than half the vote.

That Morris and Cremona would split the opposition vote was predictable.  The Morris-Cremona battle was intense; so much so, one would have thought it a primary between the two of them rather than a race against a Council incumbent.  I hoped, as many did, that at some point one candidate or the other would bow out in order to present voters with two clear choices; but neither candidate succeeded in rising above the conflict of their own accord.

Thus, rather than a voyeuristic interest in one family’s private relationships, it might be more productive to focus how to improve our electoral process.   

I propose that including the  Mayor and Council races in the primary would help.  Filling vacated seats with via election rather than appointment, as this new Council continues to insist on doing, would also go a long way to lower election stakes, hence decreasing the intensity.

Thus, our leadership could step up and address some of the acrimony of the recent election.  While Morris bears full responsibility for whatever his actions were, those who won the election should also take some share for the collateral damage of the clash that found a fault line in the fabric of a family.

Bhavani Kirnak

Encinitas