Are Tea Party candidates ducking the voters?
Tea party candidate flier attacking Meg Salyer for the condition of roads across the state and for reconstruction of SW 15 taking longer than two months. It also blames Salyer for the closing of bridges as part of the STATE's reconstruction of Interstate 40. Does this indicate knowledge of how city government works?
Doug Loudenback has been hitting hard at the two Tea Party/Windsor Hills Baptist Church candidates running for city council. He notes that promises made to voters during the MAPS 3 campaign could be reversed, as could much of the momentum we’re seeing downtown, if Cliff Hearron, 74, wins Ward 8 against Pat Ryan and Adrian Van Manen, 61, wins Ward 6 against Meg Salyer.
Hearron and Manen did extensive mailings this past week to constituents. The fliers argued the current council is responsible for OKLAHOMA – not Oklahoma City – but the entire state being ranked low for bad roads. Both Hearron and Manen are without any prior experience or involvement at City Hall. Maybe that’s why they don’t realize the city doesn’t control the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
This would be a good question to delve into at a public forum. But as reported in today’s Oklahoman, Hearron and Manen chose not to appear and answer the voters’ questions.
We at least know what they might be thinking…
These races are very low turnout; literally a couple thousand voters will choose who gets the seat, so we stand an excellent chance of winning these two seats if we put money and effort into the races. No doubt other conservative candidates will be found before the filing deadline, so the Tea Party could simply take control of OKC city government if we can rally the Tea Party members.
- Al Gerhart
Co Founder, Sooner Tea Party
Founder, Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance
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Comments
I got one in the mail the other day from the guy running against Pat Ryan with a picture of him standing by a pothole. But in the background you could see the roadway was freshly plowed of snow. I know our roads aren’t the country’s best, but they are getting better thanks to (shock!) a bond issue we passed that I am sure this guy wouldn’t support because it’s government spending. And who ever heard of a snow or ice storm that did not produce potholes??
As a member of the Tea Party, I’m pretty disgusted with the campaigns these guys have been running, primarily because of their inexplicable ignorance of city government. If I was in Salyer’s district, she’d have my vote.
To attribute the statements to ignorance is perhaps too kind. It is my understanding that these candidates are college instructors. I suspect that their statements are motivated by something less innocent that a lack of understnding of the structure of our government. I think that it is really sad that those who rally around the idea of the the Boston Tea Party would resort to such tactics in an attempt to get elected. If I am wrong and they are making these statements out of ignorance I am no less at ease. Neither situation warrants a position of leadership. If they are too careless to get the facts right before making accusations against people or are willing to ignore the facts, they do not need to be put in a position of trust in government.
Why is anyone even declaring partisan affiliation in this? The benefit to our city government is the lack of political party crap that is completely unnnecessary for running a city government. All you have to do is look north to Tulsa to see what party affiliation can do to a city government…they can’t get anything done. That city has hardly progressed in 20 years.
The guy running against Meg Salyer had illegal signs placed on the Robinson corridor in Heritage Hills. Which is interesting because almost every sign on personal property is in support of Meg Salyer.
The comment about the bridge closings was not made by one of the candidates in that race, it was made by me, in a blog post a year ago, about the problems we were facing with access to the operations center of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative on SW 15th. With SW 15th closed (with no notice from the city to those of us affected by this work), AND with both of the bridges closed, the three primary access routes to our operations center were down for the count. I emailed Meg Salyer about this, got no response, so I posted about it. Whoever printed the post card, probably found my post since it turns up if you search for “Meg Salyer” and quoted it.
I feel like a broken record, but it really irks me that these guys are taking on roads, and not ever mentioning the Dec. 2007 bond issue which still hasn’t had an impact. I’d like to ask them if they want to spend even more government money to fix the roads than the half a billion already slated. They don’t think public transit should be funded by the government, and I’d like to know why they think roads are different.
These teabaggers are beyond retarded. Why are they complaining about roads and bridges? I thought they hated government spending. Schizophrenic teabaggers make up your minds!lol
Oh YES! Just what we need, conservative tea party lunatics taking over city government! Why don’t we just get rid of the city councilo and mayor and put a dictator in place? No need to listen to the voices of the citizens whatsoever. This makes me angry!