Note: This opinion essay is in response to “Opinion: Unless you dig, you really won’t know your city council candidates,” published Sept. 9. Read it here.
I know Eileen White Read, and I was disappointed to see her op-ed on Devon Wardlow. I have served alongside Devon on the Santa Barbara Planning Commission for nearly five years. I have watched her work: I know her record, and I know her character. The portrait painted in the opinion piece does not resemble the person I know. Political candidates should absolutely be subject to scrutiny, but there is a difference between legitimate review and an effort to diminish a woman’s accomplishments by picking apart her résumé and questioning whether her experiences are impressive enough to count. This is exactly the kind of scrutiny that women running for office face too often: being told that their accomplishments are not enough or not real or that they should wait a little while longer before stepping forward to lead.
The piece repeatedly emphasizes Devon’s age, compares her to the author’s own daughters, questions whether her White House experience is legitimate, and minimizes educational and professional experiences that Devon has worked hard to achieve. It then portrays her successful career in public policy as something voters should regard with suspicion.
More troubling, some of the insinuations simply do not square with the facts. The author asks how Devon’s Obama-era experience could have been “anything but an internship” and later reduces her White House experience to a six-month internship. What the original version left out is that Devon went on to serve in the Obama administration as special assistant for private sector engagement to Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. That is not an embellishment or a clever description of an internship. It was a position in the Obama administration, a fact that this very publication accurately reported in its own profile of Devon less than two months ago.
The op-ed similarly suggests that Devon has somehow hidden her professional career from voters. Yet her work in public policy is neither secret nor difficult to discover. It is publicly disclosed and has been discussed in press coverage of her candidacy. The op-ed inaccurately characterizes her current work as “surveillance” — which is false. Furthermore, Devon has never been a registered lobbyist — labeling her a “corporate lobbyist” is simply not supported by the facts.
The treatment of her education follows the same pattern. Rather than simply describing the Dartmouth program Devon attended (which is clearly detailed in her LinkedIn profile), the author asks whether she could “earn an MBA at Dartmouth,” as though Devon had claimed that she did. There is an important difference between correcting a candidate who falsely claims a degree and questioning the legitimacy of an educational experience she accurately described.
Devon should be judged on the merits: her five years of service on the Santa Barbara Planning Commission, her knowledge of local government, her positions on the issues, the kind of councilmember she will be, and the depth and breadth of experiences she brings that inform her perspective. Even the op-ed acknowledges that Devon’s Planning Commission service has given her valuable experience and that her professional career has provided extensive knowledge of local government throughout California and the country.
Devon is a Santa Barbara local who loves this community. She came from a challenging upbringing and has beat the odds. She is a graduate of Santa Barbara High and UCSB. We should be championing a local woman who has built an impressive career — not tearing her down.
Further, we should welcome accomplished women who are willing to step forward and serve their communities, not belittle them for having built successful careers before doing so. And we certainly should not publish pieces purporting to expose the truth about a woman’s background, skills, and experience without first getting the basic facts right.
I am proud to support Devon Wardlow for Santa Barbara City Council.
