Beth Gottstein Shows Moral Leadership
Beth Gottstein is doing even better on the City Council than I thought she would. She's smart, she's hardworking, and she has solid moral instincts. With the exception of her joining with the Nasty Nine in voting to reward Wayne Cauthen with a foolish 3 year contract, she's been on the right side of all the important issues. (Even on that one, I wonder if perhaps she traded her vote for future concessions, since she could see that a majority of the Council had abandoned all rationality and wanted to shower scarce city money on a guy who lied on his resume and stole from the travel budget. Or maybe Funk's ungraceful handling of the situation provoked her into making one big, but forgivable, mistake.)
Recently, a bunch of Kansas City Democrats received a hateful, bigoted email attacking a fellow Democrat. Because it so thoroughly blended charges that would raise concerns if true with idiotic frothing worthy of Coulter, I simply deleted my copies and put it out of my mind.
Beth Gottstein, though, reacted with a better and more sensitive moral compass than my own. She posted a memo to Democratic leaders on BlogCCP, calling on the state party to censure those who fail to "practice ethical self-discipline". Thank you, Beth, for calling on us to live up to our consciences, rather than to ignore evil when it does not directly touch us.
Labels: Beth Gottstein, democrats
posted by Dan at 4/14/2008 09:11:00 PM
9 Comments:
It sure would be nice of her greatness to actually return phone calls or emails to her constituents whenever they contacted her about issues. I'm 0-6 now in getting any real feedback. The best I've gotten is "Beth is looking into it" and then I never hear about it again. She may be doing a great job of representing the political insiders, but not so much for the people who just merely live in her district.
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I don't know. I appreciated the sentiment of her letter, but as a person who didn't receive the referenced email it was also a little weird. If you're going to make a public announcement, shouldn't you use a public example? If it's just an insider tree complaint, then how about keeping it on the inside rather than leaving the plebians to speculate as to the content of the hateful and idiotic email?
And Gottstein's references to her own suffering fall in the same category. I didn't see sexist and anti-semitic attacks against Gottstein during that campaign. But here she is:
I have moved on, but many continue to speak of the brutal nature of those who took the spineless, dark road against me.
I guess I'm on the wrong email lists.
Sophia, I would send you my copy, but I, like Dan, deleted it when I saw it "accuse" someone of being gay. It was nasty and stupid. Like Dan, I appreciate Beth for going public in her denunciation, and the fact that the email is not getting spread any further adds a nice little bit of quiet justice to the condemnation.
From: "Williford Roe"
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:14:05
To:kfranklin@missouridems.org
Subject: Sanders Should Resign His Delegate Seat
Mike Sanders broke trust with the Missouri Democrat party and should resign his seat at the national convention. If Sanders does not resign his seat, his membership in the Missouri delegation should be revoked.
Sanders and his political henchman Calvin Williford were recently caught paying Governor Blunt's political consultant Jeff Roe to attack a Sanders' Democrat competitor. Unless Sanders can PROVE that Williford was working on his own, there is no forgiveness for this despicable act.
Williford is well known in Jackson County government and politics as a man without ethics and feelings. He walks out on bad debts and suffers from a well documented addiction to gambling, which makes him susceptible to bribery. He is a former aide in the Reagan White House who has never renounced his Republican membership. He has a history of using fake or secret campaign committees to attack Democrats. He secretly directed campaigns against popular Jackson County Democrat officeholders like County Legislator Scott Burnett and former State Representative Marsha Campbell.
Williford has often relied on the help of his Gay lover: John "Coach" Comstock to hide his covert undertakings. Comstock leads a group called the KC GAY PRIDE Democrat Club, which has questionable fundraising activities. In addition, Williford now has placed Comstock in the position of Treasurer of the Jackson County Democrat Central Committee.
Williford used funds from a Sanders controlled political committee called Integrity in Law Enforcement to contract with Jeff Roe's Axiom Strategies. Williford directed Axiom to run a negative campaign against Phil LeVota, who was challenging an entrenched Republican municipal judge in Lee's Summit, MO. Under relentless negative attack commanded by Williford and Roe, Phil LeVota was defeated.
Before Williford and Roe began libeling him, LeVota's Democrat background is without challenge. He is the brother of future Democrat speaker of the House Paul LeVota. As is usually the case, Roe's firm produced vile lies and distributed them late in the campaign when the Democrat was helpless to respond. Williford provided Roe with the 40 pieces of silver to get the job done.
Through these unethical and outlandish acts, Williford has done one positive thing by putting Jeff Roe on the Sanders' payroll and moving him into the inner-circle of Mike's political organization. Williford has demonstrated why we need to preserve the Missouri Plan for the selection of judges. If Sanders' Republican allies have their way and the Missouri Plan is repealed, then people like Williford and Jeff Roe will pick and choose who serve as judges like they did in Lee's Summit on Tuesday. Williford and Roe, partners in crime and burdened with bags of dirty money, will treat our judiciary like so much patronage.
Williford has no place in County Government or Democrat politics. What member of the county legislature could meet with Williford now with the full knowledge of his duplicity ? What Democrat leader could sit down with Williford even in the room without questioning whether Calvin would report what is said back to his confidante Jeff Roe?
On his way out of the Democrat party Sanders needs to apologize for his covert campaign against Democrats, which includes undermining the candidacy of Kay Barnes in the 6th Congressional District. Barnes is running against Jeff Roe's client and mentor, Sam Graves. Sanders has not as much as held a fundraiser for Kay Barnes and many believe that he uses Williford to funnel inside information about the Barnes campaign to Jeff Roe.
Mike Sanders: Fire Calvin Williford and make peace with the LeVota's or just come out and admit you are a Republican.
Why would you capitalize Gay?
Beth is worthless to the little people in the 4th. Disorganized, doesn't return calls, distant and aloof. Her ego is way to delicate to do this job, you can see it in her weight gain since the election.
Unfortunately she knows how to suck to the big money and my bet is that she will be backed by Cordish and other downtown interest in her campaign to be our next mayor.
I wouldn't send Giles to represent me in a knitting circle.
That can't possibly be the real email! The joker can't even bring himself to type "democratic," but goes instead with the republican irritant "democrat" in all usages. That he does so throughout and ends with this:
just come out and admit you are a Republican.
is too delicious.
Saddly, the writer of the e-mail was Phil Levota. He was dumb enough to call several media outlets after he sent it out to "see if they were going to do a story on the e-mail." Hmmmm. I guess he didn't think anyone could figure out that one.
Beth was called out by the Star for her hit pieces sent v. her opponent in her council race. Enough said.
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