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# Letter: Anti-living wage campaign spending and misleading phone calls on Measure JJ
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/102902-story-20021029-7/
- Published: 2002-10-29T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:49:39.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Sunset Park, #archive-import

*By Lori Klaidman*

I read your article on the living wage initiative (Measure JJ), aghast at the amount of money that the Anti-Living wage campaign is willing to spend (half a million this election so far and almost a million last election).

Let me tell you what it is being spent on. In addition to mailers and several knocks on my door, my house in Sunset Park has also been bombarded with phone calls (four so far) by the Anti-Living wage campaign. According to the phone callers themselves, they are working for a company in Texas.

From Texas, each caller has announced, that if JJ were implemented, hotels would be exempt from abiding with the ordinance, but charities would not be. I asked Vivian Rothstein, from the Yes on JJ campaign, if this was true and found that it was not.

According to the fine details of the ordinance, if the union employees and employer mutually agreed that the benefits would be greater by waiving the living wage ordinance, only then could the hotels be exempt.

Another fine detail in the hardship clause of this ordinance states that non-profit organizations (charities) are exempt from complying with the living wage ordinance. Thus, the anti-living wage canvassers are clearly resorting to blatant falsehoods in their desperation to prevent JJ from passing.

By the way, let us examine, the original argument in itself, which is just plain silly. Suppose that the statement is true that the ordinance did actually exempt hotels from paying their employees a living wage, as the phone callers claim. We are then meant to oppose this ordinance because it would not cover these hotels. This appears to be an argument in favor of a living wage!

Further, we are also led to believe in additional arguments that the same opponents of a living wage are also worried about discrimination!

Regardless, the half-truths and blatant lies that have been directed against the living wage in past campaigns have not succeeded in manipulating Santa Monica residents, and they will not do so again.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 29, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102902.pdf?ref=smdp.com)