Confrontation on the Campaign Trail

IMPORTANT NOTE: The conversation below is paraphrased. These are not exact quotes. You’ll see why that’s important soon. But I did have two volunteers right there watching, so I feel confident in saying the gist of it is accurate.

Holy moly! Things are getting nuts real fast.

Yesterday evening I went to stand outside Tatem Elementary for Back to School Night and hand out campaign flyers. I got there early and was with two of my volunteers. We were actually talking about my opponent, when I turned and there he was. Coming right down the sidewalk and right at me.

Hi, Mark! Did you bring your ice cream truck?

(That was a joke, but Mark wasn’t in the mood.)

I read what you said, and I don’t like it one bit! You’re putting words in my mouth and that’s totally not acceptable!

He was hot! Legit furious.

What did I say?

Your NuckolBall post! You said I called for book banning! I never said that!

That’s what it sounded like to me.

I never said those words! You’re putting words in my mouth, and I would never do that to you!

My volunteer jumped in.

Can I just ask you…what issue you have with the book you reference?

I’m not going to debate that with you right now!

Then they ended up going back and forth for a while. She was pretty calm, but he was still super angry. And to be fair, I don’t think he was angry at her. I think my post really made him mad. He turned back to me.

Don’t put words in my mouth!

Uh…Ok.

Don’t blow me off!

And then he stormed away.

Things cooled down after that. His family showed up and they handed out their flyers. My crew and I kept a respectful distance and handed out my stuff. I saw him having what looked like good conversations with voters. I got into some terrific conversations as well. Overall, handing out flyers is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

So in the spirit of transparency, I recommend you watch the video and see if my interpretation of my opponent’s comments about a book he said was problematic is fair. I am against school boards that decide to ban books. I think his position is decidedly less clear despite his protestations.

My orignal post read:

“Shani found a video of my opponent telling the school board what books he’d like to ban and why (which I’m completely against)”

I think my interpretation is fair, which is why I’ve amended my post to read this way:

“Shani found a video of my opponent speaking to the board of education about a particular book. I Interpreted his message as providing the reasons he felt this book should be banned (which I’m completely against)”

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OK. Pretty exciting stuff, right? Well, I promise the next blogs will be more boring and more substantiative. Also, I’m going to be offline for the next few days. My uncle is having some health issues, so I’m going to spend some time with him in Boston. (Actually, you can read about his situation here.)

FINALLY…the mandatory reminders and links