Tuesday, May 12, 2015

How To Win An Election Landslide

For days now I have found myself bumpuzzling over the puzzling results of Saturday's TRWD Board Election.

I had expected the incumbents, Lane & Leonard to lose.

I thought the record breaking early voting turn out was due to voters turning out to vote out the TRWD incumbents due to being disgusted with the TRWD Board's myriad shady shenanigans.

Including the incumbent's sleazy mud slinging lie filled campaign and its flood of poster-sized mailers.

But, when the results were tallied Lane & Leonard won. Not only did they win, they won in a lop-sided landslide


I figured the Tarrant Region's highly educated, highly intelligent voters would have rolled their eyes at the TRWD incumbent's embarrassing scare tactics of warning them about that nefarious grave-robbing Dallas businessman's evil plot to take Fort Worth's water,  forcing the people to drink toilet water.

Even after witnessing Texas closeup for over a decade and a half, I am still ignorant as to how things work here.

It is clear to me now that a lot of Fort Worth people have some sort of irrational fear of Dallas. And the mastermind behind the incumbent's campaign knew exactly what ridiculous strings to pull to get voters to vote for the incumbents.

Or maybe those voters who voted for the incumbents are all hunky dory with nepotism and cronyism and all the other TRWD Board shady shenanigans.

Those voters who voted for the incumbents must be okay with Jim Lane arranging a sweetheart deal for his bankrupt friend, Carl Bell, paying about twice market value for some contaminated land on which the world's first drive-in movie theater of the 21st century was built, along with an ice rink.

Those voters who voted for the incumbents must approve of the way the TRWD Board and Jim Oliver have treated Mary Kelleher.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must not mind the TRWD Board wasting millions of their dollars on a ridiculous attempt to take water from Oklahoma.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must be okay with the TRWD violating, repeatedly, the Freedom of Information Act.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must be big fans of a slow moving public works project they've never voted for, that keeps changing its name as the years roll by, which is now known, by many, as America's Biggest Boondoggle.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must think it makes perfectly good sense to take four years to build three small simple bridges, over dry land, connecting the mainland to an imaginary island.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must think it is a good thing to encourage people to get wet in the polluted Trinity River, while making little effort to clean up the river.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must be big believers of eminent domain abuse taking their neighbor's homes and businesses for an economic development project slated to be a big moneymaker for friends and family of the TRWD Board.

Except for Mary Kelleher.

The voters who voted for the incumbents must totally approve of hiring the unqualified son of Fort Worth's congresswoman, Kay Granger, to direct what has become America's Biggest Boondoggle.

The morning after the election I was asked by someone in Los Angeles if I thought the election had been rigged.

I admit when I saw the lop-sided landslide results the rigging thought did cross my mind. But, I can't imagine how such a rigging would be possible.

Then again, I do have a limited imagination.

What I am fairly certain of is, when the next TRWD Board Election rolls around in two years, the mudslingers are going to be slinging it at Mary Kelleher.....

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