Election 2008

GOP’s bag of dirty tricks

The Kitsap commissioner’s race for District 2 parallels state and national GOP for dirty tricks. For Republicans, these races are about power and promoting Republican ideology.

Local GOP campaign techniques are now modeled on Karl Rove and George Bush’s bag of dirty tricks. We expected the GOP scandalous dirty tricks would eventually trickle down to the lowest common denominators, just not so soon.

In the face of national GOP failures, local Republicans like Tim Matthes want us to believe they have the answers, that they’re different. They’re not.

Using a letter writing campaign, Matthes’ minions have very little truth to say. The GOP distracts, distorts and destroys enemies with lies and deceptions. Republican sympathizers like Richard Brown demonstrated in his letter (“Don’t give Garrido her job back,” Oct. 18) that he has mastered these techniques.

Brown said Garrido caused the economy to dive and businesses to leave, apparently in droves, during her time as commissioner (1997-2000). Yet, with these incompetent and false claims he did not give a single source.

In truth, during Garrido’s term Kitsapers experienced an average income increase of almost $5,000, (2000 Census, U.S. Census Bureau), and unemployment dropped from 6.8 to 5.0 percent (http://www.kit sapgov.com/das/budecodemo.pdf). Hmm.

We need that kind of performance. We need Charlotte Garrido, a proven leader who gets things done.

MICHAEL ARNOLD

Bremerton