With the race for County Supervisor growing more bitter by the day, the Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas camp released a statement late Monday charging that rival Bernard Parks “has some serious explaining to do about his 10-year membership in the American Independent Party, an extreme right wing political organization.
Earlier, the Parks campaign said the L.A. City Councilman’s affiliation was perfectly explainable.
“Yes,” said the Ridley-Thomas camp, “but will hundreds of thousands voters – who register to cast ballots in L.A. County elections everyday – really take him seriously?”
Here was the Parks explanation:
“Councilmember Parks has been a Democrat since he turned 18 in 1962. If you remember in 1992, Councilmember Parks was applying to become Chief of Police.
“Because it is a common belief that a city's police department should be independent of politics, Councilmember Parks decided to register as an independent (not as a member of the Independent Party) but still voted consistently for the Democratic ticket. Parks followed the instructions of the county registrar to qualify as an independent.
“Although he did not get the Chief of Police job in 1992, he did in 1997… which explains his decision to continue registering as an independent until he left the department in 2002.”
“If Bernard Parks had wanted to be a nonpartisan registered voter, as he claims, he would have chosen to register as a Decline To State voter,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Ridley-Thomas. .
DTS registration was available to Mr. Parks when he changed his registration from the Democratic Party to AIP in 1992, the spokesperson continued. “DTS registration also remained available to him when he re-registered in 1996 following a change of address.”
The Ridley-Thomas representative said the American Independent Party was the political home of the notorious late Alabama Gov. George Wallace. But more recently, the AIP has been the home of perennial right-wing Alan Keyes who ran as the AIP candidate against Barack Obama for U.S. Senate in Illinois. It was Mr. Keyes who became infamous during his failed campaign against the current Democratic Party nominee for President for saying, "Even Jesus wouldn't vote for Barack Obama."
“Mr. Parks strains the credulity of the County’s voting public if he expects them to believe the County’s Registrar-Recorder would have ‘instructed’ him – one of the highest-ranking members of the Los Angeles Police Dept. at that time – to pick the AIP as his political party affiliation,” said the Ridley-Thomas spokesperson, “if his intent was to affiliate with no political party whatsoever for the purpose of voting; particularly when DTS had been established to fulfill that specific intent for voters.
“Mr. Parks would like to claim he has been “a lifelong Democrat.” The first sentence of his own statement tries to assert that status as fact: ‘Councilmember Parks has been a Democrat since he turned 18 in 1962.’
“But in Mr. Parks’ own statement, he immediately contradicts himself on his declarative claim of lifelong Democratic Party membership when his statement says: ‘…Councilmember Parks decided to register as an independent…’
“In 1992, Mr. Parks was 49 years old, an age when someone with a degree from Pepperdine University and a Masters in Public Administration from USC would be expected to be clear in their own mind regarding one of the most important rights we have in our nation: the right to vote. We are free to choose our political affiliation and equally unbound in choosing to maintain no party affiliation for the purpose of affecting our right to vote. He made his choice clear in 1992 and reaffirmed his choice in 1996.”