Negative campaigning, dirty tricks and playing Gotcha

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It's that time of year--get ready!

Every election cycle we have some residents who go over Treasury Reports with a fine toothed comb, looking for anything that might be a red-flag regarding improper or incomplete reporting. They play the vigorous game of “gotcha.” If they can’t find anything there, they look for ethics violations. They are determined to find something in order to bring the opposition down in order to prove dishonesty, lack of ethics, lack of integrity, that they are liars or worse, or just to play the sleazy game. They want to plant that seed of doubt in the minds of the voters. Sometimes these complaints are over stupid, petty things and sometimes the negative seed grows.

We even have the legitimate news media doing the same thing when it comes to reporting facts or their shallow endorsements, i.e., the Palm Beach Post. Afterall, it depends upon advertising dollars and they will do what's necessary to knock out a leading candidate they do not like. The free press is corrupt surviving in a corrupt system.

We had three residents (Lindsey, Pickett and Lynch) who filed an ethics complaint against Cara Jennings that went nowhere for using her power to intimidate a local downtown business from having the Maxwell Campaign hold a fund raiser because she charged that he was "racist." There are some who still believe that Scott is racist because of this. He isn't.

Then there was Lisa Maxwell, candidate in District 4 who is presently running against Commissioner Suzanne Mulvehill. She is a former long-time, shhhhhhh "lobbyist" for the building industry who filed her own complaint against Jennings regarding non-disclosure of a mortgage.

Several years back, there were four gals with a big vendetta. As I recall, they were Arevalo, Weber, Allen and Wright who got all over Marc Drautz for not having a disclaimer at the footer of a letter he mailed out. They were still fuming that 1) he beat out Rodney Romano 2) he supported the SuperMajority and 3) he really cared about the people. They filed individual complaints, virtually at the same time, with Tallahassee. This was considered a Minor Violation by the Elections Commission. Drautz ended up paying a $500 fine months after he had been defeated by Clemens. $500 was not minor to him.

Mary Brandenburg who is term-limited this year and presently our House Rep District 89 and campaign treasurer for her husband Pete, just filed a complaint against Jeff Clemens saying he under-reported the value of two fund-raising events. Tactically this was a very stupid move on Mary’s part. I would have thought that she would have been more politically astute. You could spout the Clemens record, deplorable enough, without filing a campaign violation. We could have forgiven you for "running" your husband. This "gotcha" might very well backfire on Brandenburg.

Just last year we all had to endure the sleazy tactics and lies with a campaign flier put out by the Dirty Dozen as well as robo calls made from the Lake Worth Fire Department phone line against candidate Laurence McNamara who was running against our now Mayor, Rene Varela. Last night I met Sid Dinerstein, head of the Republican Party here in Palm Beach County, who did a robo call on the behalf of Democrat Varela. Unorthodox to say the least. We are rather sure where this all originated. Of course, Varela denied knowledge of the incidents and the person behind the Dinerstein call will never admit to it.

We are all sick of negative campaigning, nit-picking and dirty tricks but secretly we love to see what's next. Who is going to body slam whom. This year we have seen more of it than any other in recent memory from candidates with unlimited personal funds. People are also disgusted with the "gotchas." Now we have Democrats running as Tea Party candidates in order to split the vote.

We have Jeff Greene, some sort of billionaire and buying his way into office, calling Kendrick Meek “corrupt” and saying there should be a criminal investigation. Kendrick Meek, Congressman now running for the U.S. Senate, is the son of the great Carrie Meek who was the granddaughter of slaves and also was our Congresswoman from Florida. Greene also said that Meek sold out the Seniors.

Then there is Dan Gelber running against Dave Aronberg who is a Harvard graduate in Government, accusing him of voting with those "dreaded" Republicans and calling him anti-consumer.

We have all witnessed the vilification of Col. Allen West by the Democrats and the left-winged media. Last night he showed us two Klein fliers that were mailed to his house full of lies.

As the negative ads appear on TV, we say, "oh no, not him again," or we hunt for the remote to mute or click them off just like the voters will do this November. We soon will see anti-Amendment 4 ads. Click them off too. These people behind the lies have more money than sense coming from special interests groups that are only interested in their self-enrichment.

Adlai Stevenson said, "Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."