By Paul Gable
It’s less than two weeks until polling day for the June 9th primary elections and silly season is shifting into the absurd.
There is one candidate who seems less interested in being elected than in spinning crazy conspiracy theories to the voters with her posts. Several of the theories follow the same general lines as the conspiracy Chris Eldridge and Arrigo Carotti attempted to spin on Johnny Gardner just before he took office.
Regardless of the reason or the content of the videos, spinning conspiracy theories and talking trash about politicians and their consultants is not the way to win an election.
The race for Horry County Auditor also had some interesting developments this week.
Clark Parker, who announced his candidacy last August and spent over $35,000 from his campaign account by early January, has been rarely heard from since. Except for a few signs being put out and a couple of posts on his election Facebook page, little has been heard.
Parker was rumored to be suffering from some health problems in March and maybe that is the reason for so little activity.
However, a post went up on Parker’s Facebook yesterday that boggles the mind. The post urged voters to vote in the June 2nd Republican Primary. The main difficulty with that statement is that primary voting at the polls is June 9th.
I really don’t believe this was an attempt at voter suppression, which would be a serious legal problem. I believe it demonstrates a candidate who is so out of touch he doesn’t even know enough about the election to know the correct date. If he could screw up the date of the election, what could he mess up as auditor? Correct dates are very important in preparing tax bills.
This is another example of the Parker campaign being out of touch. Signs were put out by the campaign last fall even though the county limits the time political signs can be placed to 45 days before the election. The Parker campaign has demonstrated a serious deficiency in comprehending dates in the election cycle among other things.
Another auditor candidate and long-time employee of the auditor’s office, Beth Calhoun, was running what seemed to be a good campaign until recently. In her most recent video, Calhoun appears to take a shot at current auditor Lois Eargle by mentioning it’s important to come into the office every day.
While that is important, why mention it? Eargle has had some physical maladies in the last year, which prompted her to retire after 28 years as auditor and over 50 years in South Carolina and national politics.
It seems petty for a candidate who has worked for Eargle for a number of years to take that type of shot at Eargle just to garner a few votes.
The third candidate in the auditor’s race is current Deputy Treasurer R. A. Johnson. So far he has run a solid campaign explaining to the voters the interlocking duties between the assesor’s office, auditor’s office and treasurer’s office.
Johnson appears to have a better idea of the duties required of an auditor and how the auditor must work in concert with the other two offices while leaving cheap shots and outright stupidity to his opponents.
Speak Up…