Katherine Maestas: A true liberal or just another political hack?

In this year’s Elk Grove City Council race, there is one person who has decided to challenge incumbent Sophia Scherman. That person is former Sacramento County Planning Commissioner Katherine Maestas.

Although the Elk Grove city council seats are elected on a non-partisan basis, Meastas is firmly ensconced with the local Democratic machine.

In 2002, she ran against and lost to Alan Nakanishi for the 10th Assembly District seat. Recently, when she announced her candidacy for city council she trotted out local liberal heavy-weights Phil Steinberg and David Jones. And of course Maestas is the vice-chair of the county Democratic Party.

Given her affiliation with the Democratic Party, we are curious how closely aligned candidate Maestas beliefs are to her party’s.

For the sake of argument, we believe a vast majority of Democrats and many Republicans for that matter, in this era of the executive branch manipulation of our constitution would agree with the oft-cited Benjamin Franklin quote that says “They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Specifically, we are interested to learn what Maestas’ stance on the proposed anti-gang ordinance working its way through the city council that this organization opines is, among other things, an infringement on the constitutional right of free assembly.

We are most curious if she supports it on the rationale that it would make the community safer or oppose it based on a constitutional or some other basis?

To this end, we e-mailed Maestas recently (on Monday, February 4) and informed her we would be writing on this topic and invited her to communicate her stance.

Unfortunately, to date Maestas has been unresponsive. We can only speculate why Maestas is ignoring our request about her stance on the anti-gang ordinance.

Perhaps she is dismissive of ElkGroveNews.net simply because we lack the clout of the much larger and more influential brethren at the Sacramento Bee and Elk Grove Citizen.

More disturbing, perhaps Maestas is playing a game of duck and cover on the issue. She probably knows many people in Elk Grove will be hoodwinked and the City Council will be intimidated into supporting the anti-gang ordinance and hopes the matter is resolved before the elections and before she has to take a public stance.

If this were to be the case, she would appear to be nothing more than your typical political hack who will do or say anything just to get elected. How unfortunate.

It is disappointing Maestas has ignored our request and failed to be a stand-up person this city so desperately needs and courageously state what her beliefs are, popular or not. That failure shows a lack of leadership and courage.