2002-11-02
Response to Guestbook Governor Entry, posted at 1:20 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I would have responded to this person via e-mail, but they chose not to sign their name. Anyhow, here is my response."I'm a man, and I'm more charismatic than KKT." Well, Kathleen "KENNEDY" Townsend's(why can't she just use her first and last name like 99% of all candidates!?)
It's certainly not something I mind. If my name was also the name of one of the greatest families this country had ever known, I wouldn't want to give it up, either. In fact, I'm someone who would enjoy it if my future wife keeps her name as well as takes mine. It's something that makes a lot of sense to me.
platform is "I'm a woman, and I'm from the Kennedy family."
If her platform is "I'm a woman," then she'd be pretty silly. Only 5 of 50 current governors are women, so she'd be lowering her chances quite a bit by campaigning on the "woman" platform. As for the latter accusation, I don't think she's used her family name much at all in the election, and I was expecting her too.
I agree that neither candidate is all that great, but please, the lady has done nothing to deserve becoming the governor of Maryland. All the leadership roles she had (crime!) as lieutenant governor are in shambles and she's riding on her Kennedy background.
As Liutenant Governor, KKT developed the "Hot Spots" program to target high-crime areas, and violent crime reduced by twice the normal rate after she instituted the plan. Violent crime dropped dramatically in the eight years she was Lieutenant Governor. This is obviously not all her doing, but she's instituted programs like HotSpots and Operation Safe Neighborhood that have helped. At least she has ideas and has instituted them in the past. Ehrlich has verbalized none, except slot machines and he's got no alternate plan.
Please, I thought we were attempting to ignore family backgrounds for leaders when we left George III of England.
Don't tell that to the Bush family.
Hey, if I could, I would vote for Elijah Cummings for Governor. It's true that neither candidate is extraordinary. But Ehrlich is scary. He wants assault weapons to be legal. His cure for the state's budgetary crisis is slot machines. His feeling on teacher salaries is that they're not a problem at all, and people only leave the teaching profession because it's hard. He's anti-union. KKT is the only vote that makes sense.
Plus, her husband is a teacher.