I laughed out loud after reading the letter by Bud Kelley, “Why the big contributions?” (Oct. 16).
Kelley is a board member of the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District. He’s not up for reelection—but he isn’t happy that his board buddies have competition from candidates with support from the union I belonged to for many years until I recently promoted out, SEIU 721.
Twice in his letter, Kelley misconstrued the union as a “Los Angeles-based entity” (and, in his first mischaracterization, he made sure to also add the description “self-interested”). But I don’t live in Los Angeles. The 500 represented workers of SEIU 721 based out of Camarillo don’t live there either. And neither do the thousands of represented employees working in Ventura County, not to mention elsewhere throughout Southern California.
Kelley tried to portray union workers as out of touch. But it’s actually Kelley who lacks basic familiarity with us, the employees who make up the workforce that he and his fellow board members supposedly manage. Perhaps his ignorance explains why their talks with SEIU 721 have failed to reach a fair conclusion. Or perhaps Kelley is just taking the union’s insistence on good faith negotiating too personally. It seemed that way in his letter—what with his initial condemnation that we’re putting too much money into this race only for him to turn around and claim he didn’t care followed quickly by a haughty insistence that money in politics is fine as long as it comes from an entity he approves of.
We saw from Kelley’s letter that he likes Al Pacino movie quotes. Here’s one for him from The Godfather trilogy: “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.” Rosa Castro Port Hueneme