Here we go again.
Some people who appear to be short of ideas and long on venom
are back at it in San Benito County, where politics has come to
resemble a blood sport.
Here we go again.
Some people who appear to be short of ideas and long on venom are back at it in San Benito County, where politics has come to resemble a blood sport.
First came the foolish but relatively benign return of the perennial election-year sport of mutilating campaign signs in the dark of night. Some signs were stolen or torn; others got the pretty pedestrian addition of the universal slashed circle pictograph indicating “no.” District attorney candidate Art Cantu took the brunt of it, as more creative vandals set about taking liberties with his name.
Before this campaign season got rolling, The Pinnacle renewed its practice of asking candidates to pledge to run clean, issues-based campaigns. We took pains to ensure that our own opinions, columns and news coverage maintained a discourse that did not stoop to personal attack.
But others are committed to the low road. This edition of The Pinnacle contains a full-page advertisement that dredges up a story The Pinnacle debuted more than four years ago. It’s related to a court filing connected to divorce proceedings seven years ago. The statute of limitations for public opinion should have run its course long ago, but apparently, others think that a person can never atone enough for the past. For the record, the advertiser paid full price, and we insisted that the person who paid for this bit of mischief is identified in the ad.
Many residents in supervisorial District 4 were treated to a mailer last weekend paid for by “Friends of the Constitution, San Benito Chapter.” The group is led by local conservative political gadfly Marvin Jones. Like the hit piece targeting Cantu, the single-sheet mailer does not advance the candidacy of any of the three people seeking a district 4 supervisor’s job.
Instead, it takes one of the candidates to task. The victim is the former publisher of this newspaper, Tracie Cone.
Much, if not all, of what it alleges is utter nonsense.
The flyer charges that Cone traded coverage of charities and nonprofit organizations for advertising.
Nonsense.
I’m addicted to do-gooder work, and my experience is that local papers – including The Pinnacle – were generous not just with coverage, but with free advertising as well.
The piece alleges that The Pinnacle favored out-of-area advertisers, and was selective in what ads were selected. As the advertisement skewering Cantu in this paper amply illustrates, The Pinnacle continues to make itself available to advertisers, even those whose tactics we disparage. Like any business, newspapers are loathe to send customers and their money packing.
The flyer alleges that Cone was a strong and vocal supporter of Measure G, a failed slow-growth initiative put before the voters several years ago.
Nonsense.
Cone took no position on the initiative, and allowed me a forum as a columnist at the time to vociferously oppose the measure. The flyer goes on to say that she was vindictive following loss of the measure. That doesn’t match history very well, does it?
The flyer makes some veiled hints that Cone got preferential treatment in the renovation of her home. Without any way to know if someone moved her application to the top of the pile, the whispering will just have to continue. I hope the people who suspect some wrongdoing remember the project, which took an uninhabitable shack in Panoche Valley and returned it to use as a modest home.
Mutilated campaign signs, hateful advertisements and misleading mailers are not the problem. They are the symptom of something very wrong.
When the sun comes up June 7, we’ll all still be neighbors, even though there was an election the day before. I was taken aback by the vehement reaction to a piece I wrote earlier in this campaign season. In that piece I objected to signs that objected to Cone’s candidacy without endorsing the candidacy of either of her opponents.
The feedback I got ran along the lines of “good. She deserves it.”
But the elections are not a referendum on anyone’s personality. How do personal attacks advance anything?
The elections are the most important opportunity we all have to shape our future.
Lord knows there’s work to be done in San Benito County. Let’s get to it.
