October 5, 2022: Email from Jeff Schwartz to Guardian Editor Joel Kilpatrick

From: Jeff Schwartz

To: Joel Kilpatrick

Dear Joel,

Thank you very much for explaining to me that the omission of my candidate statement from the October 2022 issue of the Conejo Guardian was not done in any way out of malice, and was not done with any intention to confer advantage of any particular candidate or candidates over any other ones. I take you at your word that it is your intention to treat all candidates fairly and equally in your coverage.

I also understand the fact that your paper needed to address the dilemma it was facing when it knew that it did not have enough room in the October edition to publish all of the candidate responses.

I also understand that I was the only T.O. Council candidate who submitted a response who was excluded from the October 2022 issue. I certainly appreciate the fact that you have every intention of featuring my response in the upcoming November 2022 issue.

I also understand that you wish that it had been done differently, but that it is what it is.

So I do accept everything that you said, and I greatly appreciate your reply as well as your intention to publish my candidate responses in the November issue.

I do have one additional question for you. Is there any possibility that the CG might consider the possibility of adding my candidate responses to the online feature that it is currently publishing in its online edition?

Here would be some possible reasons and rationale for the CG to do so:

1) Although there is a massive space issue when it comes to print, space is not an issue when it comes to online content. A competent webmaster should be able to add my profile to the current online feature without running into any difficult technical issues.

2) This would align with your stated intention to avoid conferring any advantage to any particular candidate or candidates in the feature. Right now, the CG online edition is currently publishing the responses of all the T.O. Council candidates who responded except for mine. The reason why adding my profile to the online feature at this time would be in alignment with the CG’s stated intention is because now is the time when many voters are starting to seriously research this race. The County Voter Information Guide for the upcoming general election was delivered to voters’ mailboxes yesterday. Voting by mail begins in only five days, on October 10, 2022. Every voter in the district will automatically be sent a ballot by mail, so theoretically, virtually every voter will have the ability to vote as early as October 10. If the November 2022 edition of the Conejo Guardian is distributed as early as Thursday, October 27, then this would still be 17 days past the first day to Vote By Mail. So I believe that continuing to omit any mention of my candidacy from the online edition until around October 27 would confer a real disadvantage to my candidacy.

3) Given that it is every intention for the CG to treat all candidates fairly, this would seem the right thing to do. This is especially true since my candidacy is the only T.O. Council profile submitted that was omitted from the online feature.

4) The fourth and last reason to do this would be because I am politely and respectfully requesting you to do so.

I hope that you will consider what I have written, and consider my polite request for you to consider adding my candidate profile to the current online feature which you are publishing.

Thank you very much.

Respectfully,

Jeff Schwartz

Jeff Schwartz for Thousand Oaks City Council