Hypocrisy 101
Tony O’Meara
Newbury, VT
Independent candidate Susan Culp is hands-down the best qualified candidate in the Orange-Caledonia race. If you know her work, you already know that. Even those that support her opponents of both parties agree. Susan’s demonstrated ability, tenacity and focus — traits she has applied to issues in Newbury, will scale well to represent the district.
It’s no secret that the local Democratic Party long courted Susan Culp to run as a Democrat, but she has long been Independent-minded. She stuck to her principles and categorically refused, as she cannot in good faith fully support the political games of the Democratic party leadership, as well as their policies that have hurt our community.
So it became ‘any blue will do’ — to the point of eventually settling on an unqualified, malleable, novelty candidate as their one-term bench warmer. The Democratic candidate, while a likeable and enthusiastic teen, is a Progressive masquerading as a centrist. And the party still openly acknowledges that Susan is clearly the better candidate.
But then, in a move straight out of the MAGA playbook, Democratic leadership resorted to fear mongering in emails to voters asking them to abandon support for Susan and rally behind their (acknowledged) significantly less qualified candidate because a vote for Culp will result in a “hard-right, Trump-aligned” Republican winning. So much for supporting the best person for the job based on merit. This may be considered ‘just politics’ but what disturbs me is the overt hypocrisy.
The Democratic candidate claims, per his campaign flyer, to want to “end political polarity” and “do away with partisan politics” while his campaign is working to get him elected using tactics that are epitome of political polarity and partisan politics. The hypocrisy of the Democratic candidate and his phalanx of Democratic party handlers is astounding. Worthless platform rhetoric revealed for what it is. Clearly he’s a fast learner!
And let’s face it, if it really was just about preventing an R from winning, or getting the best representation in the State House for Orange-Caledonia, that is much more attainable by getting fully behind the innately qualified independent candidate, Susan Culp.
Tony O’Meara Newbury, VT