Anonymous: Thanks for stopping by; you are welcome to remain anonymous, but we feel it would have empowered your premises had you (1) revealed the status of your citizenship in Provo (2) if you are tied into the authorship (IE “RMC”) of the anti-Curtis blog you cite TWICE and (3) if you are a member of the Clark campaign or family. Understandably, we have our suspicions though you are welcome to refute these thoughts of ours (emphasize thoughts rather than accusations.)
As a five-year Provo resident, sole author of this blog, and a vocal supporter and endorser of but not part of the Curtis campaign, we shoot straight here which gives us a bit more authority in the debate than someone who hides behind an Anonymous posting. Although we already have “pulled the lever” for Curtis in early voting, we owe it to our readership to respond.
First, your accusation that we have not “really educate[d] [my]self beyond one-worded campaign slogans” goes right along with the mudslinging of the Clark campaign. Even RMC who you quote TWICE hoped the debate would not be about “slinging mud” (bottom of page; first post by RMC). Let us elaborate upon the “literally hours upon hours of listening to Curtis” we have done. Coming into this election we hadn’t a clue who either candidate was; we aren't related to anyone in Provo (does the wife count? LOL) and admittedly had never heard of Action Target. At some length even before the primaries, we met both candidates personally and asked them direct questions one-on-one eye-to-eye. We attended our neighborhood’s meet-the-candidates night at Amelia Earhart Elementary, attended a number of open houses and the first mayoral debates at the Provo city center, and been in communication via email until our concerns were satisfied. We reckon (pardon the Missouri-ism here) based on the effort of eligible voters to stay informed, we rank in the top 1%. Your accusation of us not being educated is simply baseless, biased, and demeaning to a private citizen doing their civic duty.
We will however, address your two underlying premises of debate. In reading the posting on the anti-Curtis blog you point to, we believe you are bringing up non-relevant, partisan material into the campaign. Gee whiz (sorry, our age is showing...), Glenn Beck grew up a drunk Democrat; David Horowitz was a commie—and while Curtis was neither but simply trying to bring some “common sense” back to the Democratic Party—do we really care? Is past partisan politics relevant in a non-partisan local election? The point is this isn’t a partisan race but Clark (who if you want to bring partisanship into this race in our opinion is more Democratic than Curtis sponsoring bills like HB290) is trying to make it one with these campaign fliers (see newest below). As Republicans we denounce AG Eric Holder’s forced reversal in Kinston, NC, of the non-partisan status of their local elections; but you tolerate--even advocate--Steve Clark repeatedly bringing up partisanship into this race? Hogwash.
To your second point on the green sweater comment: perhaps Curtis “lost his cool”; don’t know, wasn’t there, but Curtis did apologize. So we concede the point. Yet you know it seems a bit double-standard: like Clark attacking Curtis for not owning dogs? Clark also seemed to be losing his cool when we asked him one-on-one what he was going to do about our city’s “sanctuary city” label. So wow, both candidates have human emotions; passion is better than apathy and both these men are decent in their hearts and neither at all like Democrat Harry Reid.
On funding, Curtis has consistently said that for special projects the voters should have a say, not forced upon us like Iprovo. If we want a new rec center or whatever, are we willing to support that with higher levies? Curtis’ plan for four officers on gangs instead of one is deficit neutral; directing police who are told to “go write tickets” to actually fighting crime. As a businessman, he is keen to eliminating inefficiencies in government so that we can balance our budget as well as making Provo more business friendly to grow our tax base. Clark on the other had wants to add a layer of government by having “mentors” assigned to developers; to us growing the scope of government is not a desirable ideal.
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