Voters pay attention to the dirt

Fame is short-lived while infamy enjoys eternity and if the cavalcade of complaints levied against my character over the last couple of weeks is any indication, I am squarely amongst the latter.  Though responding and apologizing to critics may hasten my exit from the front page of the Cary News, such efforts will not remove the barb of betrayal felt by former friends and colleagues.  Time may lessen the pain but the barb itself will remain.  I do apologize to those few for whom I’ve truly caused genuine pain, as to the ones simply looking to point fingers, seeking out the next hate bandwagon, not so much.  For providing some balance to the views on growth at the intersection of Davis and HighHouse, not at all.

In his January 20th column in the Cary News (here),  Director of the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, Damon Circosta notes that the mission of NCCVE  is to “ensure that citizens have adequate information to participate in their democracy.”    That’s a goal I support and it’s the main reason I welcomed the opportunity to serve on their Board of Directors and will continue to support them financially in the future.  Mr. Circosta asserts that it’s time to clean up politics and as a society we need to “relearn the art of civil discourse.”

As purveyor of the website carypolitics.org for the last eight years, I have learned quite a bit about civil discourse.  Members have had lengthy and meaningful discussions about topics ranging from abortion and homosexuality to climate change the merits of partisanship.  Though I remain doubtful too many minds were changed, the discourse is certain to broaden the mind of anyone who takes the time to participate.  Such discussions have made me keenly aware of how difficult it is to keep civil discourse from quickly devolving into personal attacks. 

The problem with politics today is not that people don’t care; it’s that more often than not it takes too much time to really understand the issues.  Precious few voters take the time to really get to know the candidates and the issues, instead relying on party affiliation and drift media on which to base their votes.  The term “drift media” is what I call all the various mailers, door hangers, signs, and robo-calls associated with traditional local campaigns.

Campaigns know this.  They depend on it.

I’ve asked voters how they make their decisions when they toss mailers in the trash without reading them, hang up on robo-calls, deplore unsolicited email, and don’t bother watching debates and forums.  The answer is that much of the time, even in Cary’s supposedly non-partisan elections, many voters will still ask – on their way into the polling booth – who is the Republican or Democrat.  Most base their decisions simply on some vague notion of whether they like or dislike a particular candidate, having been influenced one way or another by unspecified “things they’ve heard.”

Some voters see it a little differently.  Like Desperate Housewife’s character Bree Olson, they are attracted to dirt.  Nay, they are addicted to dirt. They make their decisions not on the merits, stance, or record of the candidate but on how much dirt is piled up around them.  Challengers will solicit dirt and craft messages that magnify out of proportion the small soot against an otherwise snowy background. 

I chose to try and expose from whence the dirt was tossed and got a bit dirty in the process.   And a few more voters paid attention.  They finally had something they could relate to.