Letter to the Publisher,

On Jan. 8, I met my friend John Wheeler at Santoro Caffe Shop in Cameron Park for a visit. While we were talking over coffee, Bob Luca, a candidate for sheriff of El Dorado County, came in and we invited him over to where we were sitting. He sat and conversed with us for half an hour.

Candidate Bob Luca gave us and several people sitting at other tables his card. And I noticed that he lived in El Dorado Hills. I asked him if he knew candidate Stan Perez, who I knew resided in El Dorado Hills, too. That stimulated a response from Luca that surprised and disturbed me greatly.

He castigated candidate Perez loudly, made several racially biased and opprobrious remarks about him and his ethnicity. He claimed that Chief Perez rose in the CHP because of his Hispanic [he called it Mexican] heritage, that he was a traffic controller and not a good cop, and that were it not for his heritage, which he alleged was used to rise within the CHP, that he would never have been a chief.

We found the remarks vicious, unprofessional and unworthy of a man running to be the sheriff in our county. And, we think Stan Perez is owed a public apology from Bob Luca. That is the reason for this letter.

Candidate Luca’s remarks were unwarranted, untrue and ought to stimulate a public apology from Luca. This manner of campaigning, bad-mouthing an adversary, should not be tolerated. It demeans the whole election process and competition. What citizens want to know is why a given candidate thinks he deserves to be elected, his own qualifications, not mud-slinging at the other men in the race. This tactic has been observed from advocates of other sheriff candidates, too. It is small-minded and adds nothing to the decision-making process.

There are seven excellent men competing to become our county’s next sheriff. Do we really want one that has a race problem?

John Deryck, Placerville