Love Me Some Tea Party People
We’re having a school board race in my little community and the Tea party is financing candidates they hand picked.
We have a pretty diverse school board and the same superintendent since 2001. Dr. Thomas Randle has done an amazing job with minority schools and is popular with both teachers and parents. He’s African American.
Out of 7 school board members, only two are white men and one of them is retiring this year from District 6 and is supporting a highly qualified Latina.
Enter the Tea Party. One of their candidates, Beth Horstman, is running for District 2. Today we got a Vote By Mail application from her because, dammit, get off my damn lawn you stinkin’ kids. Old people are grumpy and vote against everything.
It was a dandy nice mailer and these things aren’t cheap.
Nice, huh?
Only problem is that we live in District 6. There’s like two district between her and me.
And she wants us to trust her with planning and money?
Just sayin’. Maybe not so much.
With her as their treasurer, maybe Joy Lutheran Church needs to go back and audit their books.
1Teaparty people always have more money than sense.
2maybe she wants some extra votes? kinda like whatshisname you had that also voted in PA? not to mention all the other republicans that got caught at it.
3I’m a retired high school teacher. I taught for 33 years, and I notice that Horstman lasted only 10 years in the classroom and left it to become a counselor. Throughout my career, I saw many teachers leave the classroom and go on to work in administrative and counseling positions because they couldn’t hack the responsibilities of being in a classroom year after year. I can’t help but think that this is what happened with Horstman. If I were the voters in the district she’s running for, I’d wonder about this move because it indicates that she might not be as interested in the nuts and bolts of educating students as she wants the citizens to believe.
4I’m curious about her funding. Is she backed by the Koch brothers who are, in case you haven’t noticed, in favor of segregation. Just google Koch bros. and segregation. And they are getting into local races like school boards and city councils, not just national ones.
5If she is crossing the border into your district with the wrong documents doesn’t that make her an illegal immigrant?
6If you have never run a local campaign you may not appreciate the understatement that
“It was a dandy nice mailer and these things aren’t cheap.” is.
By the time postage is included and you have to get a mimiumum of 2500 for any sort of real break on printing etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a $5000 – and a really good deal that would be.
Full color trifold both sides, I assume.
Willing to bet that she saved on lay out with a voleenteer.
Add signs, slim jims, stakes and misc. campaign expenses a $12,000 campaign ( probably double that) for a job that doesn’t pay anything ( I assume) in a tough economy.
Maybe they just see campaigns as a private stimulus plan for the local economy.
or
Somebody is expecting to get something out of this.
I sure no body in texas would think that way.
7Stuff in the brochure looks pretty innocuous to otherwise uninformed voters. If she’s Tea Party, she needs to be poked a couple times with a sharp stick. If she’s like most angry TP people, that’ll bring her roaring out of her corner so the public can find out what she really thinks.
8I’ve always been skeptical of lower level elections where people are not required to list party affiliation. It makes it too easy to run as a populist and govern as an elitist. Sure, I can figure it out, but it requires a longer attention span than many voters possess.
And I’m suspicious of anyone who wants to sit on an HOA Board. Those boards are usually populated by people who are looking for a fight and they wont give up until they find one.
9Ralph, that’s my HOA board – we have only 320something houses in the whole neighborhood so you’d think you’d have to work to stir up controversy with so few of us. But no. It’s been a dysfunctional mess for at least the five years.
10Saw her church affiliation and did a little research. I was raised Lutheran and my church was somewhat liberal. Since she didn’t come across as such, I explored. Joy Lutheran is a member of the North American Lutheran Church, which is formally against LGBT anything.
On the other hand, I was raised in the ELCA synod. They will ordain LGBT in long-term monogamous relationships and place them in congregations willing to hire them. ELCA is a hair more conservative than I am on things like abortion and euthanasia for the terminally ill, but they are a lot more liberal than most. I am particularly fond of the line, “The statement [on abortion] emphasizes the prevention of circumstances leading to abortion, specifically encouraging “appropriate forms of sex education in schools, community pregnancy prevention programs, and parenting preparation classes.””
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