Political Theater

Okay, I know that PopCult is not supposed to be a political blog, but I have to say that, if the returns hold up from yesterday's election, I am thrilled beyond belief that Dave Higgins lost in his bid to represent the Democratic Party as the candidate for the 8th Senate District in the general election. I know that both papers endorsed the guy, but I was on the receiving end of a really crude and offensive push poll from his campaign a couple of months ago, and he ran what appeared to me to be the dirtiest smear campaign, for what is essentially a piddly little office, that I've ever seen.

But it wasn't the push poll, with questions like "Would it change your opinion of Erik Wells if you knew he supported forcing first-graders to have abortions?" that made me root against Higgins. It wasn't even the fact that Higgins was one of the architects of Charleston's much-beloved User Fee. It was the recorded phone messages-- three or four a day, for the last three weeks. These were the kind of recorded messages that kept playing in their entirety, even after you hung up. Your phone was held hostage for the duration of their message, whether you listened or not. So I had selfish motives for wanting Higgins to lose. I didn't want to have to deal with those damned phone calls for another six months. They were driving me to my wits end.

Any politician who wants a free ticket to get elected should just run on a platform that includes putting political solicitation calls under the domain of the "Do Not Call List." Promise to free us from the tyranny of the automated phone-dialer, and you can ride that gravy train all the way to the White House.

I just wonder if more people would have voted for Congressional candidate Mark Hunt if they realized that sending him to Washington would have meant that he wouldn't be advertising his law firm on TV anymore. If he'd run on that platform, I think he would have won in a landslide.