UPDATE Both CTBob and Sue add to the scoopfest -- highlighting Lee's wacky foreign policy statements about Afghanistan -- which the CT Post seemed to just gloss over, the same way it ignores her lack of qualifications:
The Editorial Board at the CT Post had a sit-down with Lee Whitnum on Monday. Oddly, the article made no mention of Whitnum's experience or qualifications -- or lack thereof -- but just printed a bunch of Whitnum's comments (no matter how little sense some of them made). The most revealing bit of information about her candidacy came in the last paragraph:
Whitnum said she hasn't raised any money for her run against outsiders[?] and has put in about $9,500 of her own, which she hopes to eventually recoup somehow. She said she knows she is waging an uphill fight. "I'm doing the best I can with what I have," she said.
Emphasis and question mark added.
Not sure who Whitnum meant by these "outsiders" or from whom she expects to be reimbursed for campaign expenditures.
Fortunately, there's Google News, where I saw a link to Bob Gardener's diary at Weston Policy, which gives a much better look at Whitnum's candidacy:
Her qualifications seem to be that she ... hates immigrants - both legal and illegal, wrote two novels and published them herself (with sales allegedly hovering around zero), had a defense software engineering career but is now a substitute teacher in Stamford, has no discernible town, county or district political experience, has appeared at only two Democratic Town Committees meetings in Fairfield county, had a self-publicized romance with John Kerry (before he married Teresa), and somehow got the required number of signatures on petitions to earn a line on the ballot for the Democratic primary on August 12th.
Why should you care? Why should you vote? For starters, you're paying for it. Obviously, it will cost every town in the district to conduct an election that would have been avoided if not for Lee's successful petition in an otherwise pointless campaign. The estimate for the Weston election: about $5,000. It's not the end of the world. It's just that Lee did almost nothing to work for the nomination. She admits she has raised no campaign funds. But it is certain she will end up wasting our time and money.
I'm one of those who thinks primaries are good, but perhaps we need to raise the bar a little and make the candidates work a little harder to get on the ballot. Maybe collecting 2,500 signatures is too easy. In any case, none of these points were raised by the CT Post. Kudos to the Weston Policy blog.
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