Seal of Disapproval

One of the things modern parents teach their children these days is that what one posts online can come back to haunt you in the future. Pre-internet, that wasn't a problem, but it sure is now. 

Last week’s scandal, wherein an endorsed Republican candidate for Methacton School Board, Scott Misus, posted offensive comments on a public social media site, became a cautionary tale and living example of this important lesson. The Misus situation has made what one posts online relevant, and in an era of lazy and low-information voters, vividly illustrates how unwillingness to do one’s own research on candidates and to allow others to do your thinking for you can have serious consequences.

Political parties have their own agendas and tend to be run by people who like to play kingmaker for their own reasons, and since most people aren’t privy to insider info about the personalities, alliances and agendas, reliance on their opinions should be viewed as no more than a starting point; a guideline, not gospel.

And don't bank on the press to do meaningful vetting for you, either. The days of investigative reporters are largely gone, and very small budgets at most media outlets means they primarily publish little more than press releases.

Misus, who was jointly endorsed by the two Republican committees in Methacton School District (LP and Worcester; school board candidates cross file, and evidently the LP Dems decided not to endorse at all), has been dealt with by party leadership and officially stripped of his endorsement.  While it’s too late to have his name removed from voting machines, he will not be advocated as a candidate on Election Day. At considerable expense, party sample ballots were pulled and reprinted without his name on them. His name was painstakingly removed from yard signs on which he appeared.  The viewpoints he expressed are not shared by the members of the local party or the other endorsed candidates.

Absolutely, I think we should have done a better job of vetting our candidates. Court records were scrutinized but we should have gone further. All candidates were asked at the endorsement meeting whether there was any information about themselves that could embarrass the party, and Misus either forgot about these Facebook posts or didn’t see a problem with them, as they were not mentioned.

But that’s typical and not a good way to vet candidates unless you already know the answer and are verifying a candidate’s honesty. Candidates often lie or mislead. They forget, hedge, hide, engage in wishful thinking, and understandably try to put the best face on things. A good vetting process is systematic and ideally discovers both the strengths and weaknesses of candidates before offering them assistance or support. You can’t rely only on what a candidate tells you.

However, even when one DOES know of adverse information that defies explanation, sometimes parties move forward with a candidate anyway. That’s when doing your own research is most valuable.

This is not just an indictment of the GOP. The local Democrat party has had their missteps too.

For example, back in 2009 one of my coworkers was a LP Democrat committeeman who excitedly bragged to me one day that his party was going to put up as a township supervisor candidate a 'dynamic woman who was new to Lower Providence but not new to politics’.

I was intrigued because I was working on a campaign to elect the then-incumbent supervisor, so as soon I learned the name, I researched this woman and discovered that she was a notorious con artist who had been at the heart of a 2002-2003 scandal in Philadelphia wherein she pretended to be an heiress descended from a Revolutionary war hero, ingratiated herself into Philly high society, and used this persona to swindle a wealthy Philadelphia real estate broker out of more than $80,000 in cash and thousands more in the form of goods and services from others. She was so notorious that a couple of crime shows had done episodes about her. (See a good summary, here; this woman, who has since remarried, moved out of Lower Providence last year as the result of a foreclosure, so apparently her money management problems continue to this day. She still has an active court docket with Montgomery County as she's still paying restitution).

Anyway, I passed this information onto county GOP party leadership, who took it to Democrat party leadership, who then presented it to the candidate and asked her whether this information was true. She quietly withdrew and nobody was publicly embarrassed. 

Perhaps, like the “CARE” parents, we should have just shopped the story around to the local news media for maximum exposure and humiliation instead of handling it in a gentlemanly manner and giving the party the opportunity to address it first.  

The lesson is, if a party doesn’t do a good job vetting candidates these days, when it’s easier than ever via the Internet, the opposition (and/or public) most certainly will.  It’s not called ‘opposition research’ for nothing.

While the Worcester Republican Committee (via Worcesterpapolitics.com) apparently was quick to blame Lower Providence’s Republican Party for the Misus debacle, the offensive Facebook posts were never presented by their municipal leader, Wini Hayes, during the leadup to the joint school board endorsement meeting (or at the actual meeting) as a reason why we should not endorse Mr. Misus, even though Ms. Hayes took the lead on questioning candidates and asked each of them about the existence of unflattering or adverse information.

Given how WRC has positioned themselves (via their friends at Worcesterpapolitics.com) as somehow innocent in this, you can imagine how surprised I was to discover something that apparently escaped WRC six years ago when it endorsed current supervisor Susan Caughlan, and earlier this year when they re-endorsed her for re-election.

Ms. Caughlan (also known as Mrs. David Brooks, whom I’ve written about previously), an attorney, wrote and published an article for the William and Mary Law Review  in 1987 that defended the in-home possession and viewing of child pornography as a protected First Amendment right [you can read her argument yourself here].  This was not a random class assignment she was forced to write, it was an analysis she chose to make, write and publish.

I’m not sure how one can defend the creation or mere existence of, let alone the private possession, viewing and sharing of, child pornography anywhere, anyplace, anytime, but this woman evidently feels the framers of the Constitution envisioned this as a protected, God-given right more than two hundred years ago - as long as it occurs in the privacy of your home, of course, if I read this correctly - and attached her name to this garbage. As a Republican, as an American, as a parent, as a human, it disgusts me that WRC would hold up someone with these reprehensible views and endorse them as some sort of exemplary representative of our values, no matter when she wrote it.

In the event that Caughlan belatedly defends writing this as some sort of youth-inspired insanity, it gets worse. In the “You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep” department, I’m told she’s had a long friendship and association with recently convicted child porn purveyor (and Worcester Twp resident) John Harris. This friendship is shady especially when you consider that he has reportedly endorsed her in the past, donated money to her campaign, and records show she voted  to spend in the neighborhood of $200,000 of Worcester Township taxpayer dollars protecting his emails from discovery in a Right-To-Know case (Worcester didn't have an email system of their own at the time and now, of course, we know what kind of things were lurking in his email). And, incidentally, she’s also voted to spend taxpayer resources to battle Methacton School District in efforts to delay and restrict the installation of field lights at Methacton’s football field in an effort to prevent them from impacting nearby residents, which includes and benefits Harris, among other things.  

This friendship/association is common knowledge in and around Worcester, so why, again, was she ever endorsed? Was SHE vetted? As I mentioned above, WRC chair Wini Hayes asked Methacton school board candidates seeking a party endorsement this year if there was anything negative about themselves that they needed to explain; did she ask Caughlan the same thing at their meeting to endorse a supervisor candidate? And if so, did Caughlan ever tell WRC about this plank in her ‘conservative’ platform?

Is it any wonder, then, that the fastest growing voter identity group is “independent” and that increasingly, voters look with more favor upon UNendorsed candidates?

Political parties are made up of imperfect humans who despite the best of intentions, sometimes get it wrong. Voters have a wealth of free information easily available to them to determine who a candidate really is, what he/she is really about, and whether a candidate resonates with their values.  The fact that so many have voter apathy and abdicate the vetting responsibility to others lends validity to the saying ‘you get the government you deserve”.

Endorsements: Blind leading the blind?

It was recently reported that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party's State Committee would not be endorsing any candidate for governor in the upcoming gubernatorial contest.  The Times Herald article indicated that 'two separate votes failed to produce the necessary two-thirds majority for any of the candidates'. 

While this outcome may be more a function of the fact that this weekend's blizzard prevented many of the committeepeople from making it to the meeting, rather than being unable to agree on any one candidate to endorse, it does raise a good question, one I've wanted to write about for awhile now:  why does either party bother to endorse candidates for a primary? Doesn't that defeat the reason we even have primaries in the first place?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the noun 'primary' in this context as "a caucus, an election in which qualified voters nominate or express a preference for a particular candidate or group of candidates for political office, choose party officials, or select delegates for a party convention".

Voters. Choose.  So...if a primary is supposed to be open, wherein any interested candidates throw their hats into the ring and allow the voters to select a winner by virtue of a majority of votes cast, why do parties go the trouble of endorsing candidates? 

The problem I and others have with the concept of 'endorsement' is  that it allows a few people -- very early in the election process - to make decisions that affect the majority, to be 'kingmakers'. While this is the very essence of the political system in general, in that we elect a few to represent the majority, it was never meant to apply to primaries. It smacks of an attempt at controlling the outcome.

Aside from other problems with the primary system (which have only been a wide national practice since about 1968), the primary election itself was meant to be an opportunity for the voters to directly express a preference and determine which candidate we the people want to 'promote' as the nominee to represent them against the other party for specific offices. Too many people blindly rely on an endorsed candidate as the only one worth considering.

I say 'blindly', because it's a mystery as far as knowing exactly what criteria these kingmakers use to evaluate candidates' worthiness and suitability for the office they are seeking.  Are there party standards? Are there individual guidelines? Are there ANY at all? Seriously - if you know, educate me. I've tried to do my homework and find out, to no avail. 

I also say 'blindly' because endorsements have become a tool that has enabled voters to be lazy and not take the time to educate themselves about individual candidates and their platforms, instead choosing to abdicate that job to committepeople, who theoretically are more informed. And maybe some are, but I know more than a few of them, and I wouldn't trust some of them to find their own way home, let alone know best who would represent my political viewpoints at any given time, especially since they're almost never seen or heard from unless it's time for them to run for re-election. 

And this isn't a swipe at committeepeople, per se;  I know several across multiple municipalities who are intelligent, involved, hardworking, and in touch with their constituents. I do trust their opinions. Unfortunately, they're in the minority. Committeepeople have other functions within their respective parties, and most perform them well. I'm suggesting endorsements shouldn't be one of them.

The problem with local committeepeople endorsing candidates in the primary is that in some instances, they are political 'insiders' who owe others political favors or loyalty, and thus vote the way they are told; support candidates who can be controlled; or who vote for whoever they think is best for the party and not necessarily what is representative of the people. 

All I've observed is that the committee people may (or may not bother to) go to a meeting where the candidate makes a brief pitch for the office - and may or may not be softballed questions - may or may not read any printed material about the candidate - and then a selection is made.  Many times, it's not unanimous. It leaves committeepeople who prefer an unendorsed candidate in the position of having to work to support the campaigns of candidates they don't believe in. It's a lot easier to do when you are asked to support a candidate in the general election that has survived the primary on his own, unendorsed, as the result of the will of the people and not the will of committeepeople.

Since it so often seems that we take these folks' advice, and vote for whomever they choose to bless with their endorsement, and then realize we don't like who we voted in or their policies or agenda (or worse, that they've turned out to be crooks), why do we continue to participate in this process and trust the judgment of people we barely know about candidates they barely know?  If we truly want more responsible people in office, people that actually represent who we are and what we stand for, why don't we eliminate the endorsement process entirely?

Frankly, I'm pretty much at the point in my own party here in Lower Providence where I want to support whomever they DON'T endorse.

It's really our responsibility as citizens to educate ourselves about anything that requires our trust or our money, and it's a responsibility we increasingly abdicate to others.  What's that old computer programming phrase, 'Garbage In, Garbage Out'??

A whole separate issue is: should whom the state committees choose to endorse, if anyone, override what each county's, borough's and township's Democrat and Republican committes would like to do?  Sometimes a local municipality wants to endorse a candidate, but the state or county level party has already chosen someone else, and they fear fallout if they are seen as being out of lockstep with the 'party line'.

I think I'd much prefer independent thinkers over mindless robots who do what they told and are too afraid to 'make waves'.  Even more, I'd prefer to see completely open primaries with no endorsed candidates. As Sarah Palin said yesterday in her speech to the tea party coalition "Contested primaries aren't civil war; they're democracy at work and that's beautiful."