Voters within her district received a negative mail piece that's dressed up as a postcard from Naples, Florida. The front of the card shows off an expensive condo community and implies that it's owned by Scales. On the inside, the following text reads:
Hi! You probably haven't heard of me, but I'm your City-County Councilor! Florida has been great so that's why I haven't had time to spend on the crime, unemployment, flooding and drainage problems and abandoned properties throughout the city! Give me your vote and I'll sent you another postcard in 4 years when I need it again!
Christine
Does she really represent us?
The mailer indicates that the Indiana Democratic Party paid for it. This is a common practice where a state/county political party, or some type of committee aside from the candidate, will pay for negative campaigning so the candidate won't tarnish their name. I can only guess that the Democrats are targeting Scales with this because their internal polling shows that their candidates, council candidate Kostas Poulakidas and mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy, are losing in that area of Indianapolis.
The claims that Scales neglects her council duties and district is a complete fantasy and I won't spend time further debunking them, but this mailer isn't the first time this meme has come up. William Diehl, a Democratic blogger, says the same thing in this post and tries to insinuate that Scales is against working men and women who run for political office. When I bought up that the real concern with Poulakidas is that his occupation as a partner at the law firm Krieg DeVault LLP will bring a list of conflict of interests as long as my arm, he shut down the comments section and deleted my post.
I have no doubt that Poulakidas, who specializes in economic development and municipal finance representation in his law firm, is extremely qualified to be on the council. But lawyers and others who work within and/or for municipal and state government should be held to a high standard so that they aren't voting in favor of their self-interests. And all too often, the simple act of abstaining from a vote doesn't happen from those within both of the major political parties.
Hat tip to Gary Welsh for the description of the mailer.
I keep saying this. To those of you that have concerns: TALK TO KOSTAS! Don't lob criticisms in over the internet. Just go to the man. He's been willing to talk to me about how he would handle his job on the Council and outside of it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the criticism of negative campaigning goes, I think Gary Welsh has lost all credibility.
Welsh is his own person and doesn't need me to defend him.
ReplyDeleteAs for asking Kostas, I have. I've personally written the candidates for the respective R and D candidates for At-Large, District 4, and District 24 to profile them since these races are a combination of A.)Interesting to me and B.) Competitive. I know it's a very busy weekend for candidates, so I'm not expecting responses right away. But as I'm sure you understand Jon, this job doesn't pay much and I can only put so much effort into contacting candidates.
First Matt, you were not at the District 4 forum where Councilor Scales continued her attacks against Kostas because she doesn't work outside of the council like he does. She also continued to attack the fact that his wife worked. Saying that would prevent him from serving effectively.
ReplyDeleteThis was all a continuation of HER letter to the editor in the September 26 edition of the Indianapolis Business Journal. Please read this before you claim I made up the attack or twisted her words. She made it an issue, I was just letting people know about it whom may not have access to the IBJ.
Terry, at Indianapolis Times wrote about it on Monday, October 3, 2011.
William