Letters to the Editor: Kevin de León wants to serve his constituents. So why isn’t he resigning?
I was heartened not only by the recent appointment of a new County Attorney, but also by the selection process and the public input leading up to it. There was no question that Kevin de León was chosen in a competitive process. The voters picked him, and I appreciate his service to them.
But there were questions I had, none of which I brought up in my letter of support for Mr. de León, nor during his interview with the editorial board.
Did the voters get the right guy?
This is a guy with a big ego. He was the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee in his 10-year term and had a seat in the state legislature before he started to practice law. So why did he become a lawyer? In my opinion, he was a political kingmaker. Why spend half his life building a career on a hill of political chicanery? That’s the question that needs to be answered.
And why did he go into a practice that required him to spend hours of his time at the office for the sole purpose of making money? He never practiced in order to make money, just as the other elected County Attorneys, like Steve Cooley and Bob Patterson, also never practiced law to make money.
As an elected County Attorney, I believe Mr. de León should have been an elected state representative or state senator, and then perhaps he would have been more open to ideas and more open to change.
Instead of being a legislative kingmaker, he is a political kingmaker who has abused his position of power, including abuse by charging taxpayers outrageous rates in order to support his office for the past nine years. Instead of serving his own constituents, he has served his party, and even more, his district, which he is responsible for creating.
He is a man who took a job from the public and then decided that he would charge every taxpayer in the County for his office to make it his own private club.
I was very upset with his performance as County Attorney, but he would have been better served by resigning from office and resigning from his position on the board of which he presided, with power to change the entire system of government.
