Tuesday, July 5th, 2005...9:21 am
At Least She Didn’t Say Spinal Tap…
The Arizona Daily Star, in its further quest to avoid any consequential coverage of this year’s city council race, has been running a “Know Your City Council Candidates” feature.
This is somehow supposed to be helpful. Never mind that your typical Greg Hansen story on some high schooler who may or may not play for the U of A seems to be more thorough. I mean, these are only the people running the police department, fire department and making sure the roads stay paved.
Nope, we are treated to a “profile”, also known as: no writing whatsoever.
But, we do get to find out that Councilmember Kathleen Dunbar loves the movie Best in Show. Wow. I like that movie too, mostly because it makes fun of people like Kathleen Dunbar.
She also says that “It is becoming apparent that methamphetamine use leads to significant crime in our community.” Good to know you have been paying attention during your years on the council. Maybe you should have worked on this instead of building more dog runs.
I don’t have a lot of respect for Dunbar. I first encountered her when she was in the legislature. I had been playing phone tag with her, and I finally gave her my work number. The receptionist handed me the message and said, “I don’t know who this is, but she sounds very confused.”
When she ran for city council, she showed up at a hearing of the sign code committee and proceded to address not us, but the audience. It was such total pandering. But it worked, it always does.
She, well, her staff, also tried to have me thrown off of that same sign code committee after she got into office. Her office claimed that I couldn’t serve on the committee, since I am in the legislature. The trouble is, I am not in the legislature. They must have confused me with someone else. Word got back to me, and her office was mad that it wasn’t handled by city staff with more “discretion.” The most discrete thing to do would have been to check my first name. They tried to throw me off again later, for an equally shaky reason.
This incident led to the best retraction of all time. The Tucson Weekly (which my brother and I both called when this happened) published an item about this in the Skinny. Then, they messed up our names. They printed a retraction the next week that started with “I guess we are as stupid as Kathleen Dunbar…”
Hey, I didn’t call her that, they did.
3 Comments
July 5th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
On the issue of meth, Dunbar is a shameless hypocrite. No one in this community has done more to hurt the efforts of law enforcement to control meth production.
Accross the country, states and cities are passing laws requiring drugstores to keep pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) - a principal ingredient in meth production - behind the counter. Not only was she the only councilmember to vote against a resolution in support of such legislation, she successfully lobbied legislators in Phoenix to water down the bill. But it’s really unfair for me to give her all the credit. She was actually just joining an effort spearheaded by WAL-MART. It seems that putting pseudoephedrine behind the counter dramatically reduces sales of the drug. It also dramatically reduces meth production and VIOLENT CRIME. According to TPD, 85% of Tucson’s violent crime is linked to the production and distribution of meth.
Now she’s trying to make it a campaign issue, and we need to make sure she chokes on it.
Dunbar should be run out of town on a rail.
July 5th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Well, I do agree that Dunbar is a whore for every special interest that gives her a passing nod, but I don’t think she should be mocked for the only public service she’s ever performed that seemed to come from the heart: the creation and support of dog parks. For those of us who love our dogs (and don’t we all?), dog parks are a serious quality of life issue. Dunbar has a genuine interest in the issue which seems to have little to do with political gain, so let’s give her credit for the one thing she deserves credit for… and trash her on everything else.
July 5th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Geez, Mike, if I can’t be a cynical and unfair on my blog, where can I be?
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