While I was away in Florida a message was left on my cell phone telling me that the caller was about to put a Charles Obije lawnsign in my yard. I called back and left my own message telling them not to do this – at least not yet. I explained that I have been waiting for three or four weeks for another 2nd District candidate to call and set up a get together with me. Dr. Kirby seemed a bit surprised when I called him to request that we meet over coffee. He is being pushed by board members who I have been at odds with and I have commented on that in the blog. But except for that support I’ve held my comments to the things Dr. Kirby has said in the Tribune for instance, his conviction that their are just one or two board members who cause most of the School Board’s problems.
I have actually put calls out to two school board contenters being promoted by my adversaries but both have kept a ten-foot-pole’s distance between themselves and me. As I will be on the Board for at least two more years their reluctance to talk with me now leaves me to worry that their promises to make sure the new board gets along are just so much lip service. If they won’t talk to me now why should they talk to me after they are elected? At this point I’m being on my best behavior for diplomacy’s sake. If they proceed to follow in their advocates footsteps I’ll be even more likely to hold tight to my cudgel for fear of getting censured again – for speaking plainly and honestly.
Charles Obije, on the other hand, was happy to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me. I offered him lots of advice, for instance, I suggested that he plan to be his own man if elected. I wonder if other candidates are getting that advice from their partisans or forming secret alliances and ententes like the Europeans did before getting sucked into World War 1?
I read a couple of letters to the editor yesterday from the usual suspects, long in the tooth political types, extolling the virtue of a school board candidate. Blah, Blah, Blah. Its the kind of stuff that campaign’s manufacture like confetti to create the illusion of a groundswell of support. Today there was a rather different
If its for real a Lakeside resident saw Charles Obije while he was campaigning and went over and asked him what he was up to. She liked what she heard and planned to vote for him. She seemed to especially like the idea of having a school board that wasn’t at each other’s throats.
