It was cold and unpleasant and I just couldn’t bring myself to go door to door. Shame on me.
My only scheduled campaign activity was a League of Women Voter’s forum at the new and improved Grant School. Its been renamed Myers-Wilkins Elementary.
I spent my afternoon catching up on some reading until I got a call from a television reporter. She all but called me a liar twice then sent a reporter over to tape an interview.
The scandal didn’t amount to much as far as I could tell. It revolved around whether I was really a “retired teacher.” The lead reporter told me “anonymous sources” had outed me and that there were no records of my ever having taught in Proctor or Duluth. My first reaction was to laugh. Had I caught on to the real scandal I might not have been so jolly.
The news hound at my home left no doubt disappointed with the dates, locations and witnesses I’d offered him. He left but set up his camera in my front yard to point at the word “honesty” on my lawnsign.
A second reporter’s call cued me into the real scandal. Someone tried to plant a real hatchet job in my campaign. So far nothing has shown up on the news. I decided there and then to put an ad in the next Reader Weekly. I’ve been thinking I ought to do it since the Reader has published my columns for years. Only this would be a larger ad than I had envisioned. It might be a full page ad that I’d have to pay for myself because most of my funding has dried up.
This is the third time someone has tried to smear me. The first was Dixon’s pal Ralph Doty. He nailed me three days before the 2006 election. The second time was a few years ago when I took JCI to court. I got an unexpected call from the Editors of the Duluth News Tribune telling me that they were going to run a story the next day about how I had threatened the lives of some fellow’s children. The fellow had been hounding me for weeks in angry emails and I’d started getting curt with him in my replies.
I called the editor back and left the foulest message I’ve ever left for anyone on an answering machine. I think it got listened to by everyone at the DNT. In my message I promised to send the long string of emails for them to see the emptiness of the fellow’s allegations. Once the Editors read them the story was scotched.
This time I got word of the smear two weeks in advance of the election. The rumor may die on the vine but I have little but contempt for anonymous character assassins.
After the forum I was pulled aside and warned that someone was about to smear me. I explained that I was aware of the plot and, of course, when I got home from the forum I watched the menacing television news report. There was nothing…….at least not yet.
I turned on my computer and typed up a quick 500 word commentary on the situation. I completed it by Midnight and it will be in this week’s Reader Weekly. Telling the story to an audience larger than this blog will help me get some sleep tonight.
