Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Thoughts about a ho-hum election

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Impossible that I should miss the Rotary Candidates Forum. Impossible!

I think I missed one some years ago with a good reason, but last week’s? I simply forgot.

That says something about how apathetic people have been about this election. I’m not even going to be a poll manager this go-around, because I’m not sure I can force myself to keep an absolutely neutral expression on my face all day.

Maybe I won’t even vote. No, that’s not an option. Not ever.

There is a good argument that voting should be the privilege of an educated population, and that those who don’t learn everything about the issues and candidates don’t belong in the voting booth.

That’s me, this time. I don’t know a lot about the candidates, but I do know a little about their connections. Just enough to reject most of them.

Lee Poolman is not only an employee in the same Fulton County office as Peachtree City Councilman Steve Rapson, but is also his subordinate. How can he be objective if — or inevitably when — the two men have different views on a city issue?

Another candidate, Judi-Ann Rutherford, is employed by the Development Authority of Peachtree City, around which swirls enough controversy without now having, potentially, two council members who must abstain from voting on DAPC issues.

What kind of government is that?

Peachtree City government used to have a certain nobility to it. Mayor and council were people of honor, who meant what they said and could be trusted.

Use the Letters to the Editor space in the newspaper to disparage fellow council members or mayor? Lord help us, never.

Members of the planning commission or the development authority or the library board held their meetings with equal decorum. Courtesy was the norm.

This I know because I was there, at one time or another, as a member of council or as a reporter covering most of the city’s boards and commissions.

All of us, those who participated and those who were writing the first draft of Peachtree City’s history, were keenly aware that we were building a new community, and we wanted to do it right. We must have done something right for so many people to come, see, and sign.

I began seeing a change in Peachtree City during the 1999 council election, when I wrote about what I called the politics of exclusion, suggested by elitism, racism and anti-Semitism in Dan Tennant’s campaign statements.

He said, “This community should have one of their own serving on City Council, namely a married, average-income professional who is raising children in a Christian environment ... and who share the same values.” Then he listed among those values a commitment to family, church, and living right.

That lit my fire, largely because one of his challengers was Jewish. I responded, “When you say one of our own, I hear code words. I hear white. I hear male. I hear conservative Christian. I hear middle-aged.

“I hear exclusion.”

I’ll spare you the rest of my tirade, but I did want to share something funny. Dan has a brother, Don, an editor of ComputerWorld e-magazine, based in Hong Kong at that time. My column inspired a spirited exchange of comments between the brothers, and Don used it as a column himself.

He wrote: “I told Dan I thought the piece was extremely well-presented, which to me has nothing to do with concurrence. Still, he was surprised by that response, so I elaborated on the part with which I did agree: I am repulsed by the phrase ‘one of our own’ because it’s necessarily exclusionary. and offensive to anyone who falls outside of your definition of yourself.

“Dan fired back an e-mail and really let me have it: ‘Well, from a liberal-thinking journalist, I should have expected that reaction. It is remarkable how people like you have a knee-jerk reaction to assume exclusion is implied.”

Don continued: “There should only be one Us: human beings who live or work in Peachtree City. The same of course is true for human beings who live or work in Hong Kong. The difference is that here, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. It just seems to be a given that there’s only one Us, despite the fact that it’s difficult to conceive of a more culturally, ethnically, professionally or economically diverse community. As a liberal-thinking journalist who has covered the information technology beat here for nine years, I’ve seen how much Hong Kong, and the rest of the world, for that matter, has benefited from the remarkable flow of technology that has come out from the U.S. It occurs to me that Hong Kong’s one Us-ness would be a valuable commodity to send back in return. We revel in the oneness of our diversity.”

I wonder if Don Tennant might want to move here and run for City Council.

In fairness, I have not heard or read that Dan Tennant is making the same claims this time, but his abysmal record otherwise, even of council meeting attendance, takes him off my radar screen.

If I knew nothing more about Stuart Kourajian, I’d vote for him for not being Dan Tennant.

So. When you go to your polling place next Tuesday, you can just about close your eyes, poke at the screen and vote for whichever candidate your finger lands on. But don’t stop there.

I am passionate about the question on the ballot: approval of a bond of nearly $5 million to expand the library. Plans include more space, more books and computers, and a children’s section partitioned off from the adult stacks. Library users complain about the lack of scientific publications. Materials like those require a lot of room. By all means, YES on the library question.

Otherwise, ho hum.