Yes, this is an ad for Ray Washington, but it is also the same conversation other candidates have been having for the past two years. Unfortunately, this has fallen on deaf ears. Not only does City Hall not care, but the voters themselves, 85% of whom routinely stay home, have not cared as long as they can continue to pay the high rates.

I will only use the video from the District 1 race because it was the best. That forum also had the most fireworks with Grundy provoking the most rebuttals. He criticized Ray Washington for not using facts and for being a “Johnny come lately” to the race, and inferred that Yvonne Hinson-Rawls was only using “buzz words” and didn’t really know anything.

In the At-large race, it was relatively peaceful. Richard Selwach, usually a flamboyant participant, stayed on message about creating a “vocational vortex” through teaching trades to east side students. Nathan Skop went after former commissioner Lauren Poe for “bragging about the biomass plant” but did not actually name him. But anyone watching could see Poe’s anger smoldering, but he never offered a rebuttal.

I will get video from the At-large race in future posts. In the meantime, I have more from District 1.

I found out that if you were misquoted, no matter how egregiously, they did not feel obligated to print a correction. My campaign had a web site, but back then nobody really went to candidate web sites because so few had them. So only a few people got to read my reaction to the mistake that was sent to 60,000 readers of the Sun.

When I started this site (originally called Freeforallcandidates.com), I thought that people who ran for public office on the small local stage would leap at the opportunity to take control of their information by using this free service. What I discovered was that almost all of them control their information by letting out very little of it.

In the absence of candidate-generated-content, I started going to the forums and doing a little reporting, as well as recording some of the highlights and putting them on the web. This gave people more information than they usually got from the Sun, which was usually pretty scant, and never mentioned anything exciting that actually happened. But at least the voters would periodically write me to express their gratitude that there was one convenient place to find candidate information.

Today, the Gainesville Sun is worse than ever at covering local issues…unless they are cheerleading the city commissioners who are all a part of the local Democrat Machine. Their masthead should identify them as the official propaganda tool of the local party and be done with it. I cannot recall the last time I saw an actual investigative report in the Sun.

Fortunately, there are other channels for local information. There is a local talk show called Talk of the Town on 99.5 FM that has been showcasing the best investigative reporting this area has probably ever heard. Former County Commission candidate Ward Scott has been exposing the Machine politicians on the county commission by going through all their audio files and finding serious violations of Florida’s Sunshine Law and playing them over the air. Talk of the Town has been doing this for months, and there is not a peep about it in the Sun. People are calling in and wanting to know what they can do, and the hosts of the show have been urging listeners to call the State Attorney and complain and to urge him to take action.

What I want to know is: will the Sun finally report this when commissioners are doing the “perp walk” with their lawyers on TV20?

If you would like to hear these audio files yourself, you should listen to the show at noon each weekday. Or, since they do actually talk about other things, you can go to the local Republican Party Website and see “The Ward Scott Fraud Files” and listen to them there.

It is a scandal that our local “professional” journalists do not report on this  story, and that Ward Scott, a private citizen, has to do this himself. And it’s a further scandal that other government officials have to be begged to do something about it!

Overall, it was a pretty even-handed event, that dealt with the good and the bad about unions. Ms. Jordan concluded that the rank and file members of the teachers’ union has allowed its leadership to create a counter-productive bureaucratic machine that is more about politics than education.

Enjoy the 14 minute video below, and feel free to comment!

Every candidate knows that whatever they say in public is up for grabs, and is likely to end up as an opposition ad if it serves their opponents’ purpose. The Bottcher campaign still prevailed upon YouTube to take the Republican ad down. But the ad is still available on the Alachua Republican web site at this location.

The Alachua Republicans have responded to this take down with this statement:

“As soon as we put out our “Bottcher Is Wrong” web ad, it was apparent from the phone calls and emails that we received that we had upset some Democrats.  Apparently, being held accountable for her own words bothered her so much that she had a campaign operative file a BOGUS copyright complaint against us with YouTube.

“We made sure that we met all four criteria for “Fair Use” as described by the U.S. Copyright office, and we are confident that the video will be restored by YouTube.  Still, that process can take several days, so, in the meantime, we installed our own video payer on our website.”

Last night’s forum was a bust, in my opinion, because it was bland. It was too “nice” to highlight the differences. But this kind of thing is just what the doctor ordered. Are there more out there? Let me know about em in the comments section…