“We” received an “unsolicited” letter?
I Smell Another Rat…
By Susan M. Halpern
Former Addison Councilmember (1992-1999)
Oh how those facts do matter….
Let’s start here: Former City Manager Ron Whitehead is not running for office. There are six candidates who are running for office, and I’d like to hear about their qualifications. But Meier is orchestrating a different campaign. You see, three candidates are incumbents who were part of the Sam’s redevelopment debacle, and Addison mayor Todd Meier is desperate to keep them in office because, well, they do what he tells them to do. And that suits his dictatorial style just fine.
Meier is so scared that Addison voters might elect people who are truly independent thinkers that he’s pulling all the stops out. His first order of business, for reasons clear only to him, has been to try to besmirch Former City Manager Ron Whitehead, the architect of much of the beauty you see around you and the success Addison enjoyed for three decades before this current group came along. I guess Meier is deeply concerned that Ron’s 32 years in Addison and vast municipal experience might cause people to listen to what he has to say. Go figure.
The latest effort to smear Ron appears in a “newsletter” being circulated by Meier supporters. They’ve published the text of a supposedly unsolicited letter that they say “we” received. There’s no mention of who “we” is, and they don’t show you the actual letter. That seemed odd to me. And when you’re given the author’s background, it’s all East coast: Kentucky, North Carolina. You had to think: Holy smokes, some guy in North Carolina has something to say about Addison and Ron Whitehead? Wow. This must be important, right? And of course, this “unsolicited” letter conveniently trashes Ron and inexplicably endorses the incumbents you’re led to believe the author doesn’t even know.
I found it all a little too convenient. So I looked around. I found the author’s website. He’s a political consultant. I couldn’t find an address on the website, but in addition to the Kentucky and North Carolina credentials, I immediately noticed experience on the FRISCO Charter Review Commission and the FRISCO Board of Adjustment. Then I went to his Linked In page. It’s the same guy, I can tell by the photo. And there it was: his address is Frisco, Texas.
But it gets better. On his Linked In page, I noticed that we had a link in common. Guess who: Janelle Moore.
That’s right, the author is a local political consultant from Frisco who knows one of the three incumbents. He’s not some random guy from the East coast. That explains why he knew things that weren’t even in the news article on which he was supposedly commenting. Sort of changes the nature of the supposedly “unsolicited” letter that allegedly showed up in a mailbox belonging to whoever “we” is, doesn’t it?
See, the facts do matter, don’t they?