Desperation of the Opposition

You may recall my previous post titled Hjelle - Confused about Who is Running. The main theme for that post was that the "majority" will do or say anything to get elected. You may recall that Erik had sent an email to a resident which contained many false statements about me. He managed some how to conclude that the reason that Lions Park was not being improved was because the fire and police protection around his home was not adequate. That was however just the start of the effort by the "majority" and their gang in this campaign to deceive the voters.

Before the primary Mr. Bartol decided to send out a mailing containing several half truths about me and throwing his support to Delray Rokke ( I assume that both of his supporters did just that). The main assertion was that I had voted against the budget that added new police and firefighters for the city. He of course failed to mention that this was the same budget that raised the city levy to 10.2% making it the second largest increase in the last ten years. It was also the same budget that reorganized the city staff. Maplewood has currently paid out over $500,000 in lawsuit settlements to employees who were fired in an inappropriate manner, and there are more lawsuits out there. I would vote against it again given the chance.

Then they started a postcard smear effort. The first card came out before the primary and was recently discussed in an article by City Pages. I don't think that they thought the whole thing through however, because the card compared me with Paul Wellstone and several other liberal leaders. Think about it. All the current elected officials that represent Maplewood are Democrats and Maplewood has almost always voted DFL in state and national elections. So to tell all those Democrats that Paul Wellstone is my role model most likely was not going to convince them not to vote for me. The primary results would tend to bear out that fact.

They seem to have figured it out by the second postcard however. It is amazing that without blinking an eye that they could change me from a way left leaning Democrat to a big spending Republican in just two weeks. The card did have a hint of truth, in that it indicated that you should support John Nephew and Delray Rokke because they are Democrats. Rocky I assume does consider himself a Democrat. After all he did seek the DFL endorsement. The Democrats must have not been all that impressed though because while John Nephew and I received over 70% of the votes of the DFL delegates. Mr. Rokke got 12%. This was the result even though I was not even at the convention but was in the BWCA
.

They say I am raising taxes. I expected this when I wrote Rebecca's Debacle. The facts are I voted against the 2007 10.2% levy increase, Rebecca voted for it. There will be no increase this year (whether that is good or bad is yet to be determined) so how can I insist on raising taxes?

They say I support wealthy developers over citizens. The largest development we have considered lately that has major impacts on citizens is in Gladstone. Rebecca voted for it, I voted against.

Multi- national corporations? All that I can think of is 3M and I have not even bought a roll of tape recently.

Let's review so far: they first attempt to appeal to their conservative base and say Will is a liberal so don't vote for him, then they decide that it might work better to try to convince the people that gave me their endorsement that their memory is fading and it was really Rocky that they endorsed. Good luck with that.

Now they have sent out the latest card.

As you can see they are still working the "even though you endorsed Will you should vote for Rocky "angle. The new twist is to bring back a trick from the last election. That is to try to convince you that I want to sell off all the park and open space land in the city and develop it. They will at some point also try to convince you that I somehow make a profit if that occurred. So once again I'll tell you that I own a remodeling company, Rossbach Construction. New development does nothing for us. We need older homes that need repair or upgrades. If I was trying to use the city to help my company I would be advocating low interest loans for the upkeep of our housing stock. If you get the chance ask Rebecca or Rocky when is it that I have voted to sell open space. They will not have an answer. They might say that I was willing to discuss it as an option during the Gladstone project. They would be correct. I believe that as a council person I need to understand all the options that are brought forward in debate. The "majority" does not like to consider all angles, they prefer to just do what they want ( their city manager, their reorganization, their conservation easements).

I started out with the "majority" will say and do anything to get themselves elected. It reminds me of the old joke, " How do you know when a lawyer is lying?" Answer, Their mouth is moving.

One final note. It is too bad that Delray has gotten himself tied up with this. I personally feel that Rocky is a good person at heart. But by standing back and not speaking out against this type of smear campaign, I'm afraid that he is completing his transition to the dark side.