San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapf – incumbent for District 2 – has gone missing for at least 3 district town council candidate forums now.

Zapf failed to show at all three area forums; the Pacific Beach Town Council candidate forum, the Ocean Beach Town Council forum on April 25 and then most recently the Clairemont Town Council forum on May 3. (The Mission Beach Town Council calendar didn’t show any recent or upcoming candidate forum.)

Zapf – the only prominent Republican in the race for District 2 – has amassed more campaign funds than other candidates for city council throughout all the council races. So, perhaps she feels she’s safe or knows she’ll at least be in the November run-off.

For at least one of the town council candidate forums, Zapf had an aide email the president with her positions or what’s she’s currently doing. For example, at the OBTC forum, president Marcus Turner read an email from Zapf assistance Conrad Wear to the audience. However, up in Clairemont, the council president did not receive anything from her office about different issues (if they had received an email, they wouldn’t have read it to the audience). Yet, her office must have emailed her positions to the San Diego U-T, as the article about the Clairemont forum included information from an email from Zapf.

The problem with the email to be read out loud is that board members or people in the audiences of the various council forums – you know, her constituents – cannot then ask the incumbent questions nor can Zapf respond to new issues or concerns. Her email is read – unchallenged.

It’s a case of basic unfairness.

Now, Lorie always has another engagement, usually a previous engagement – as her usual excuse. In fact, at the OBTC forum, Wear’s email announced she was at a meeting of town council representatives – and that’s why she couldn’t make the Ocean Beach event. It was as if saying, ‘see, Lorie is out there busy doing her job.’ (OBTC reps had only a day’s notice about the meeting and couldn’t attend.)

It is simply not very democratic nor very transparent and representative of Zapf to just avoid these grassroots community forums. (Not even in your old base of Clairemont, Lorie??)

There is no way to really resolve this before the June 5 Primary. Except maybe to complain to her office at 619-236-6622. loriezapf@sandiego.gov

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Frank Gormlie

A lawyer and grassroots activist, I was finally convinced by Patty Jones to start the OB Rag, a blog of citizen journalists, after she got tired of listening to my rants about the news. Way back during the Dinosaurs in 1970, I founded the original Ocean Beach People’s Rag - OB’s famous underground newspaper -, and then later during the early Eighties, published The Whole Damn Pie Shop, a progressive alternative to the Reader.

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