Turds & Blossoms: Vargas’ B.S. Planned Parenthood endorsement

For weeks, our email box has been under siege with endorsement announcement after endorsement announcement from Democrat Mary Salas, a current Assembly member running for the 40th State Senate seat. Salas has got the California Federation of Teachers, the National City Firefighters, Equality California and on Sunday, she expects the state Democratic Party to ratify its endorsement of her candidacy. Enough already!

We get it, people like you, and we’re perfectly capable of visiting your site and reading the 35 organizational endorsements and 130+ endorsements from public officials. Here you go, a basket of springtime assorted flowers, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, the whole lot. Seriously, Salas, no further spam necessary.

But for turds and giggles, we also visited her Democratic primary opponent, former Assembly member Juan Vargas’ web site. He lists only 14 supporters in his “partial list of endorsements.” One of them jumped out at us:  Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties. Why would Planned Parenthood endorse a male reproductive-rights advocate over a female one when it comes to a woman‘s right to choose?

It turns out Vargas’ claim has been the source of controversy for several days and Planned Parenthood has asked him to remove it from his site. According to Vince Hall, Veep of Public affairs for Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund, here’s what happened:

Our board of directors interviewed both Juan Vargas and Mary Salas, presented them both with questionnaires addressing a broad range of reproductive health issues and reviewed both of their legislative records and came to the conclusion that they were equally acceptable on issues of choice and both rated 100% by Planned Parenthood. Neither of them was endorsed by Planned Parenthood because we wanted to avoid any confusion by applying that term to multiple candidates. We have spoken to the Vargas for Senate campaign about their use of the term ‘endorsement.’ It was a miscommunication and is being rectified.

While it may have been an honest mistake, Vargas man earns a steaming cowpie for the bullshit “endorsement,” which, as of this posting, still hasn’t been removed from his campaign site.