You may wonder how the editor of The Explorer can make three misstatements in such a short editorial, but Dave Perry managed to do so.
#1) Mr. Perry either doesn't care or doesn't know that life isn't always fair. Dr. Don had "personal issues," not the least of which was having his brother nearly killed by a drunk driver only weeks earlier. To write "if Emmons wasn't really planning to serve, perhaps he should not have run at all," is not a well thought out comment from Mr. Perry.
#2 If Mr. Perry would have checked with his reporter, Patrick McNamara, he would have known that the law is very specific as it pertains to "an also ran" candidate not moving up to the runoff election.
3) Perhaps Mr. Perry does not know we are having a state wide election on May 18 to determine if a 1% sales tax hike will be approved. This is not solely an OV election. Is Mr. Perry suggesting we no longer have a primary, which is how it has always been done, regardless of how many candidates are running?
Below is The Explorer editorial. Judge for yourself.
Art
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Short takes
By Dave Perry, The Explorer
Published:
March-31-2010
Don Emmons, the Oro Valley Town Council candidate who earned a berth on the general election ballot despite no obvious campaigning, has withdrawn from the May 18 ballot.
That's fine … although, if Emmons wasn't really planning to serve, perhaps he should not have run at all.
There's a less than fine consequence. The next top vote-getter from the March primary, K.C. Carter, does not advance to the general election ballot. That leaves three hopefuls, Lou Waters, Joe Hornat and Matthew Rabb, in competition for two remaining town council seats.
The intent of the primary election is to make sure there are not more than two candidates for one open, elected office. With Emmons' departure, there are 1.5 candidates for each slot.
Oro Valley voters are being given less of a choice when they go to the polls in May. They'd be better served if a fourth candidate, in this case the fifth-highest vote getter among the remaining candidates, would be placed on the ballot.
The vacancy further makes one wonder why the community incurs the expense of two elections, a primary and a general, when it could have made its decisions all at once.
3 comments:
Hard for me to agree that Mr. Perry is wrong. While I understand and respect that for Emmons life got in the way and he had to drop out of the race, I truly have to wonder how committed he was to running from the beginning. I saw only a few campaign signs, he did not have a website, and he discovered that life interfered and was unable to attend two out of three candidate forums. A friend of mine receives emails from Ms. Latas.
An email dated February 13 encouraged people to vote for Emmons.
A second email from Ms. Latas, dated March 7, only encouraged people to vote for Matt Rabb. There was NO mention of Emmons. My friend and I both found this odd...
On March 24 this blog announced Emmon's withdrawal as a candidate. Then I read on your blog that "Don confided in us some time ago that family issues may preclude him from continuing as a candidate."
So had Don confided in you as early as March 7 when Ms. Latas sent out her email that he was considering withdrawing as a candidate? Many Oro Valley residents have noticed the same things about Emmons (and received the same emails from Ms. Latas).
Do you suppose Mr. Perry had the same observations and received the same emails? My point is that his conclusion regarding Emmons might not be off base.
Previous threads have had endless discussions regarding Emmons and the fact that he withdrew from the race. Honestly, I thought this blog had moved past that discussion. But Art, when you go back to discussing it and claiming Mr. Perry is wrong, this discussion will begin anew!
Jay D--- I acknowledge there are many readers of The Explorer that may or may not read our blog.
We have two choices when statements are made either here or there that are questionable.
We can either address them or ignore them.
In some cases, we ignore them. A good example was when "Eleanor" made the false statement onthis blog that Mike Zinkin received major financial support from the Democratic party of Oro Valley. That was either an unintentional misstatement or more likely, a bold faced lie.
We chose to delete the comment in lieu of responding.
As for Mr. Perry's editorial, we opted to point out what we believe was incorrect information.
I don't believe the rest of your comment is at all pertinent.
Likewise, I can't say that Perry doesn't raise important points.
I, too, have long questioned the need for both primaries and general elections in these local, non-partisan races. Special election notwithstanding (meaning that a statewide vote usually doesn't occur most Mays), it does seem like a waste of money for races that typically don't draw mega turnouts.
Sorry to hear about Emmons' brother. My hopes for his full recovery. And, best wishes to Don in his future endeavors.
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