Political independence

Here is Adrian Perkins. A young West Point and  Harvard Law grad on the make.

After graduating from Harvard Law earlier this year, Perkins, 32, returned to his hometown of Shreveport in order to run for mayor as a Democrat.

Only a year ago, he told the publication Harvard Law Today that he intended on pursuing a career in technology and was considering taking a job with the corporate firm Sidley Austin in Los Angeles, where he worked as a summer associate. “If I go to a corporate law firm, I could carve out a specific space for (practicing tech law),” he said.

Go get in on the ground floor in California helping cell companies sell Fitbit data to health insurers or whatever.  Or go back home to Shreveport where your "impressive resume" puts you on the path to being a bigger fish more quickly. Either way there's plenty money to be made. There are so many choices for people who make their way into the club of careerist Ivy grads.  

The one rule, of course, is your first responsibility is always to the club. 

On Aug. 29th, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Diane Feistein received a letter from eight recent or current members of Harvard Law’s Black Law Student Association (BLSA), including Shreveport mayoral candidate Adrian Perkins, in support of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court.

The Bayou Brief contacted Perkins, both directly and through his campaign, and, as of the time of publication, has yet to receive a response.

The letter praises Kavanaugh, a staunchly pro-life conservative who is now confronting credible allegations of sexual assault, for meeting with African-American students in March and providing them “his insights and advice” on how to secure a judicial clerkship. “The students who have signed below write to express appreciation for the Judge’s enthusiasm on this issue and hope that his efforts will be taken into consideration,” the letter reads. 

The Bayou Brief  story actually gives Perkins and his classmates a bit of an out here observing in a concluding paragraph that their letter went out before the sexual assault story came out. It even goes a step further suggesting that, in the absence of these allegations, the letter, "may be perceived as a sign of his political independence and willingness to forge meaningful alliances with conservatives." 

So I guess my first question is, how is that better? Or more to the point, in what way does this blind loyalty to the Harvard Law alumni club maintained for the purposes of career advancement demonstrate "political independence"?