Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hard Truths about Donna Frye


I want to strongly recommend Carl Luna's column in this week's issue of City Beat regarding Councilwoman Donna Frye. Luna puts down on paper what I know a lot of people have been thinking about her for quite sometime now. He argues: "In trying to best serve her constituents in District 6 as well as the city at large, Frye has often--this observer would argue too often--forfeited her own judgment in favor of some ill-defined vox populi." [Link]

Many of us admire and respect Donna Frye for the leadership she has demonstrated in trying to change the way politics is conducted here in the city of San Diego. Donna's problem as so pointedly described by Carl Luna is "[her] often admirable but also sometimes extreme commitment to doing what the people want runs the risk of demagoguery." [Link]

This I think gets to the core of the problem with Donna Frye. She has not been a truly effective politician, because she has not been able to or is unwilling to find that area between maintaining your core principles and compromising on some of them to achieve some accomplishments. Go read the whole column and come back and comment. [Link]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well if we're gonna speak hard truths, then let's face reality. Donna is not a politician, she is an elected political activist. Like an activist she sees things in black and white with no shades of gray. This is her strength and her weakness. Politicians have a goal and are willing to compromise on things as long as there is progress toward the goal, political activists want all or nothing, they aren't willing to join coalitions if it includes people who they view as suspect. A great example of this is Mike Aguirre. If Scott Peters supports something than either there's a loophole for his cronies to profit or it's just evil... Just an observation.

Socrates in Love said...

The problem with elected activists is that they sacrifice compromise for the sake of principle. When ideology trumps reality we end up with hollow legislation and little that addresses the concerns of "the people" that said elected represents. In Donna's case, I fear that a cult of personality has formed around her creating a bubble in which she believes her own spin.