Something's Fishy With the Recall Excuse

The Recall Group is claiming that the only reason it is not seeking a recall in court is because they don't have $10,000 to bankroll a lawsuit. The Star does its best to bury the smelly corpse with the remarkably gullible claim that "In the end, the effort to recall Mayor Mark Funkhouser simply ran out of money."

Folks, I don't think they're telling us the whole truth.

First off, there's no way they couldn't find $10,000 if they really thought they had a chance in court. Friends of other candidates would find a way to make it happen overnight. Barring that, they could have gone back to the streets and raised the money in a couple weekends. Not even counting the bogus signatures, that would be less than a dollar each. This thing has been headed up by a real estate lawyer and an experienced campaign professional - no way in hell are they giving up because they can't raise $10,000.

Second, they had a lawyer right there. Harris Wilder, their long-winded spokesperson, is an attorney in good standing, fully capable of typing up a petition and filing it. Dividing the $10,000 by $200 per hour (a fairly low rate for experienced attorneys), they're ballparking the thing at 50 hours of time - a long week of work, perhaps, but dwarfed by the hours other people put in on this whole misguided effort.

Third, there wasn't a deadline here. If they thought they had a valid claim, they could spend the time they need to raise the funds for the suit. Why would they throw in the towel so quickly? Remember when, a few weeks ago, they made a big deal out of hiring an experienced Civil Rights lawyer to give them legal advice?

And that, friends, is the fly in the ointment.

They've received their legal advice, and they know it's time to exit the stage. They failed to gather enough signatures, and no lawyer can change that fact. On top of that, I imagine those volunteers who submitted bogus signatures begged for this thing to go away as quickly as possible, in the hopes of avoiding criminal charges. When you ask someone for $10,000, they ask smart questions, and I imagine every donor lost interest the moment they saw the legal grounds proffered.

By pretending that their effort is shutting down because they could not raise $10,000, the Recall people are refusing one last time to admit the truth. They failed, plain and simple. $10,000 was not going to bring them any success, or they would have their $10,000, and plenty more where that came from. But they don't have to admit that to themselves if they can point the finger at someone else for failing to rescue them from their own failure.