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Was Nancy Lytle's 'I will run' e-mail a threat to city attorney?

by Jay Thorwaldson

At a pivotal career-decision point June 29, City Attorney Ariel Calonne received a "threatening tone" e-mail from Councilwoman Nancy Lytle telling him "I will run" for City Council and that LaDoris Cordell would "run with me."

Both Cordell and Lytle have since declared they are running independent campaigns.

The e-mail surfaced publicly Thursday, ripping open open a running split on the council and a personal feud between Calonne and Lytle. Calonne last year triggered months of controversy when he complained in a confidential e-mail to council members of a public comment by Lytle, ultimately involving lawsuits by the Weekly and San Jose Mercury under open-meeting-law and Public-Records-Act violations.

The e-mail also immediately became a campaign issue for the Nov. 7 election -- in which Lytle, Mayor Dena Mossar, Vice Mayor Bern Beecham and Councilwoman Judy Kleinberg already face more than eight challengers, with the Aug. 8 filing deadline still a week off.

The e-mail preceded by more than two weeks Lytle's and Cordell's separate public announcement of their candidacies and starkly contradicted public statements from both candidates that they plan to run independent campaigns.

"I will run. LaDoris Cordell has agreed to run with me. I am excited and optimistic again," Lytle said in the brief e-mail. It was sent at 10:49 p.m. Sunday, June 29, while Calonne was staying at the Boulderado Hotel in Boulder, Colo., waiting to be interviewed for the city attorney job there. He accepted the job and has signed an employment contract, even though he has not yet submitted a formal letter of resignation to Palo Alto officials.

"L. Cordell and I want to keep our candidacy private until we have a chance to strategize over the next few weeks," Lytle said in the e-mail. "I am letting you know due to your upcoming option with Boulder but have told only a handful of insiders.

"Seems like you deserve to know all the factors at play in PA when you go to make your decisions," she said.

Cordell, Lytle wrote, "has the capability to restore respect among our ranks and from the staff. She can work to turn the tide on the ethics problem and will help us get land use controls back in place. It is very promising and exciting." Lytle also raised an issue of a code-enforcement problem inviting another candidate for council, Harold (Skip) Justman.

Calonne was staying at the Boulderado Hotel awaiting interviews when he received the e-mail. He told the Weekly on Thursday that he did not know what to make of it but "I think I decided that I should be serious about the interviews."

"I perceived the message as either a threat, encouragement or a taunt -- no data to decide which," Calonne said of his initial reaction to it. "I read it, blanched or groaned and closed it as fast as possible with no reply in an effort to pretend I hadn't seen it.

"The only thing I was sure of was that it was grossly inappropriate, it appeared intended to cause consternation, but what else is new? I think I decided that I should be serious about the interviews."

Lytle on Thursday flatly denied that she intended the e-mail as a threat or taunt. She said because "Ariel encouraged me to run" during a June 18 luncheon meeting, she was just giving him a courtesy notice of her decision.

"I was providing information to inform his decision, not influence it," Lytle elaborated in a "colleague's memo" e-mail sent to other council members and the local press Thursday evening.

"I wrote the e-mail as one of his professional references and a participant in his career advancement," she said.

Calonne responded that he never encouraged Nancy to run, nor would he ever encourage any candidate to run for political office, as he believes that would be professionally inappropriate.

"I did tell her she shouldn't base her decision on what I do," Calonne said. He had said earlier that he had not listed her as a professional reference, but that she may have been contacted by a job-search consultant. He said he knew of no reason why she felt she should inform him of her decision to run or not run for the council.

Mossar said she was distressed by the e-mail and its timing.

"It's hard to understand the motivation, but it seems to be inappropriate, and it does have a threatening tone." Most council members seemed unaware of it until the last few days, she said.

The existence of the e-mail -- sent Sunday, June 29, at 10:49 p.m. -- has been rumored around City Hall for several weeks. Calonne in early July confirmed that he had received an e-mail from Lytle but declined to discuss its contents.

A paper copy was obtained Wednesday by the Weekly, just hours before Councilman Jack Morton circulated to all council members an electronic copy he received from Calonne at his request -- making it a public record. Lytle responded by e-mail shortly after 8 p.m. and copied the Weekly and the Daily News.

In his cover e-mail, Morton said he learned of the June 29 e-mail on his return from Kansas, where his family has a farm. He said he was not surprised "after the events of the past year" that Calonne had decided to "test the market."

He said he was surprised that the council had not "acted to determine what it would take to retain this core member of our organization and a committed member of our community."

Mossar said while no formal action was taken, there have been a series of discussions with Calonne.

Mossar said the council on Monday night will discuss some attorney-related issues in closed personnel session, then discuss in open session the naming of an interim city attorney and the process the council should follow in seeking a new attorney.

Full copies of the June 29 e-mail, Morton's colleague's memo, and Lytle's response are available on www.PaloAltoOnline.com.

Jay Thorwaldson is editor of the Weekly. He can be e-mailed at jthorwaldson@paweekly.com.

The documents behind the news...

Cordell reasserts 'independence'

She told the Weekly that she had a visceral response when she learned of the e-mail's existence on Thursday, and she issued the following statement:

"Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not running with any other candidate or against any other candidate. Nancy Lytle is only one of many people who encouraged me to run.

"I considered the decision to run carefully and announced my candidacy when I was certain I wanted to run. The timing was not strategized with Nancy or anyone else.

"I am an independent thinker running an independent campaign. I speak only for myself and no one else can or will speak for me."

Cordell, a former Superior Court judge presently serving as an assistant provost at Stanford University, told the Weekly she deeply values her reputation of many years "for credibility and integrity" and is deeply distressed about the perception caused by the contents of the e-mail.

"That's true. We are not running together," Lytle told the Weekly Thursday. "My comment (in the e-mail to Calonne) was that we were running in the same race, not running together. There is no slate. We're running independently in the same race."

Relating to the sentence in the e-mail that "L. Cordell and I want to keep our candidacy private until we have a chance to strategize over the next few weeks," Lytle said: "I can tell you that what was intended was that we were evaluating our candidacies in parallel, and doing our own planning for our candidacies independently," she said.

"I have said that my decision to run was highly influenced by her decision."

Lytle said her public statement in early July that she had not yet decided whether or not she would run was because she still needed to discuss her candidacy with supporters.