You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Dirty Politics.
I had never heard of the candidate prior to my phone call. She is running for a council seat in an obscure district in a city with way too many districts.
She is cocky and brash as I tell her why I am calling.
“There are accusations mam, that you incorrectly filed your disclosure statement in 2011.”
“No I didn’t,” she says bluntly.
Did she knowingly fudge her disclosure statement?
Maybe.
Did she make a mistake?
Probably.
Did she react badly to the news I was doing a story?
I’d say so.
Dirty Politics.
It is what it is.
With a week to go, in the city race the mud is slinging and the accusations flying.
Those behind are scrambling to generate a foothold in the backside of other candidates, trying to leap frog into the voter’s consciousness.
One of the accusations too reach my in box?
A city council candidate who had some financial troubles in her past. Bankruptcy and judgments.
In a nutshell she and her husband filed a bankruptcy.
Almost 5 years later – when she decided to run for office – she filed a mandatory disclosure statement.
She said she had not had a BK in the last five years.
But as of the signing date of her disclosure document, she had.
4 years and 9 months to be exact.
Oh, if she had only waited, 3 months.
Still she wrote NONE under the heading bankruptcy.
And of course, a rival candidate brought this to our attention.
When I called, the woman was defensive, angry and at times wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
At one point, I try to cut her off.
“Mam. Mam. Mam.”
She was having none of it.
“It’s dirty politics,” she kept screaming. “It’s a smear campaign,” she kept saying.
She told me she did nothing wrong and was advised by the Ethics Commission to handle her paperwork accordingly.
Of course, I call the ethics commission and they say that is not the case.
And so it goes.
“I’m a grandmother and a veteran and a community activist. They can’t attack that,” she hollers. “So they go after this,” she bellows.
And then the shocker.
“And my opponent is a racist.”
What?
“Yes. Look it up on facebook. He called me a Hatian and I’m not a Hatian. He is a racist.”
I wonder what that means. Does it mean anything.
She counters with the race card when the opponent levels charges of fiscal irresponsibility.
“I’m not a racist,” the incumbent will tell me. “How can she manage the city’s 1.9 billion dollar budget if she can’t even manage her own financial affairs,” he will say in his response.
Good question.
I air the story and like a viewer watch it with an incredulous eye.
Is this really what the American political system has become.
A series of negative slurs that escalates between candidates trying to out shout each other.
One more week and we can find the toothless guy in the tornado destroyed trailer home.
“it sounded like a freight train.”
Yes. But was it racist?
Life’s Crazy™