We have multiple important topics to address this week, including two more ridiculous attacks on local candidates by the major political parties.
The dirty politics in the Senate District 13 race continue, this time with a mailer from the Maine Republican Party that essentially blames Laura Fortman for the Great Recession.
“LAURA FORTMAN FAILED HER CHANCE TO LEAD,” the mailer shouts. The capitalization in these mailers is almost as offensive as the messages they carry.
The mailer goes on to “explain” that during Fortman’s time as commissioner of labor, Maine had its highest unemployment in decades.
The image on the mailer shows an office worker packing up his belongings, ostensibly off to a life of Laura Fortman-induced poverty.
The mailer fails to mention the reckless behavior by mortgage lenders and other factors responsible for the deepest and longest economic downturn in America since the Great Depression.
It fails to mention that the unemployment rate across the U.S., in 2010, was at its highest level since 1984.
Guess what else it fails to mention? Fortman’s opponent was in the Senate at the beginning of the recession in December 2007.
To hold either one responsible for national and global economic factors or to expect either one to have single-handedly kept Maine chugging along, immune to such factors, is plain dumb.
On to the next attack!
On Friday last, the Maine Democratic Party gleefully distributed a mass email containing a background check and court documents detailing the long-ago misdeeds of Rep. Jeff Pierce, R-Dresden.
Most of the documents pertain to some drug activity at age 18 and age 20.
Jeff is now 56. He has run a business for many years, serves his community as chair of the planning board (and does a fair and nonpartisan job there), and is up for a third term in the Legislature.
The Democratic Party wants to make Jeff out as a hypocrite because of his comments and votes about drug issues, yet Democrats always talk about the need to rehabilitate rather than punish drug offenders.
What is Rep. Pierce if not a model for rehabilitation?
Who’s the real hypocrite here?
We want both of these races – Senate District 13 and House District 53 – to focus on issues instead of distortion on one hand and youthful mistakes on the other.
We want to add another point about this plot to undermine Rep. Pierce’s re-election prospects.
Prior to their release by the Maine Democratic Party, an anonymous caller was shopping these documents around to news organizations.
He called us and faxed us the documents. When we declined to run an article, he said he would continue his search for a willing partner in his smear campaign.
We know of at least one daily newspaper that passed, like us – one of many major newspapers excoriated by Republicans daily as an outlet for Democratic propaganda.
Think about this. Who passed on the story? And who, after the Democratic Party spread the information far and wide, gave Rep. Pierce a platform to give his side of events?
That’s right. It was the “liberal media.”
Think next time before you write off all “mainstream” journalists as “fake news.”
Next!
This is the second-to-last edition before the election. This means we will tighten our standards considerably for letters next week, the final week before voting.
Got something negative to say about a candidate? Not here you won’t.
In the last week before an election, we never print any letter we think might merit a response from the other side, as we are out of time to publish such a response.
We will continue to accept endorsement letters next week as long as they adhere strictly to a pro argument.
