2 of 3 Former Commissioners Deserve To Be Council-ers

Three former Guilford County Commissioners are hoping to earn enough votes to serve on the Greensboro City Council for the next two years.

Two of those candidates deserve to win.

I sincerely hope that voters will elect Mike Barber (District 4) and Mary Rakestraw (At-Large). While both Barber and Rakestraw have run confident, competent campaigns, neither has resorted to ugliness in trying to earn citizens' votes. Both of these former commissioners bring intelligence and decency to the table, as well as the strength of their convictions, and while I do not agree with all their positions, I do believe they will try to do what they feel is in the best interests of all of Greensboro's citizens.

In contrast, while Trudy Wade probably possesses many positive qualities, she should be embarrassed by the campaign she's chosen to run against Sandy Carmany (District 5). The way she's run her campaign, she should have gone ahead and put herself on the national stage, where such tactics seem more commonplace. The cartoon-based ads she's chosen to use have been unnecessary and expose an ugly desperation. She has every right to challenge Sandy Carmany but to have treated her opponent with such disrespect is inexcusable. A similar campaign tactic was used in the not-too-distant past, and the results in that election suggested that the unnecessarily ugly ads back-fired. In similar fashion, I'm hoping Trudy Wade's ugly tactics backfire and that voters choose Sandy Carmany instead of Wade. Otherwise, I fear that Wade, like T. Dianne Bellamy-Small, may never learn the lessons that both those politicians need to learn about how to treat and represent fellow human beings.

Though I hope Trudy Wade loses, I refuse, however, to wish upon Trudy Wade what she did to her last opponent. If Trudy Wade barely wins her current election attempt, I hope that Sandy Carmany won't refuse for eighteen months to concede the election. (I think Sandy Carmany has far more class than to do something like that.) Whereas Trudy Wade only left John Parks with 2 1/2 years of the 4-year term he was elected to serve on the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, with the Greensboro City Council's two-year terms, such a rude maneuvering would only leave someone with 1/2 a year of their term to serve. Such behavior would be unconscionable.