☆ Past Stanford FedSoc prez: SJ CMs' union browbeating “cannot be shrugged off due to ignorance”

Manhattan Institute legal policy fellow Tim Rosenberger, Jr. recently graduated from Stanford Law, where he was Federalist Society chapter president (during the infamous heckling of a guest speaker, supported by now-resigned DEI Dean Steinbach). In this Opp Now exclusive, Rosenberger, Jr. parses the Ortiz/Torres/Candelas kerfuffle SJ media's already swept away: How on Earth is using city stationery to pressure a business into unionizing one big whoopsie?

In 2018, a former city councilman in my hometown (Cleveland, Ohio) pled guilty to 26 misdemeanor ethics charges and paid a $10,000 fine for voting on contracts in which a nonprofit, where his wife worked, had an interest. Never mind that he had already resigned from his council seat over the matter, or that he had specifically sought legal counsel over whether he could vote, and been assured he could, or that his vote hadn’t mattered in the outcome of the contracts, or that there was no evidence that his wife had directly profited from the contracts; the lapse in judgment became an expensive, and even criminal, mistake.

San Jose’s city attorney claims that councilmembers Peter Ortiz, Omar Torres, and Domingo Candelas’ use of official stationery in a threatening letter to a local business was a naïve mistake. The use of this stationery appears to put the force of the city behind labor organizers and against business owners and, at the least, creates the appearance that the councilmembers are performing a shakedown for union organizations that have supported them and their local party.

The argument that these “new” councilmembers just didn’t know that this use of city resources was improper strains credibility. Councilmembers should have a general sense that there is a need for great care to avoid even the appearance of impropriety when advocating on behalf of people and entities that have provided overt political support to them and their parties. Furthermore, councilmembers here made a convenient ethical oversight that placed a business in fear of retaliation from the city if it failed to come to terms with politically connected unions.

Even if the use of city stationery was a mere oversight, it is not clear that the city attorney has provided an explanation that should shield these councilmembers from legal sanction. The consequences of these sorts of ethical mistakes cannot be shrugged off due to ignorance of the law or confusion about its implications.

Read former CM Pete Constant's perspective here.

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