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Seen a Rogue on
the loose?
GOP legislative hopeful David Mayfield makes our weekly hall of shame for first walking right up to the line of Roguish behavior and then leaping well over it. Mayfield, a state House candidate from Oregon City, first caught our attention last month when he snubbed Project Vote Smart ("Dishonor Roll," WW, Aug. 12, 1998), which asks candidates to take its political-awareness test so voters might learn where candidates stand on issues from gun control to health care. Although 71 percent of all Oregon candidates took the test (see results at www.vote-smart.org), Mayfield did not. In a letter penned for him by GOP consultant Tom Mann (not, Larry Harvey, as WW suggested previously), Mayfield expressed concern that Vote Smart's test might allow his answers to be "interpreted differently" than he intended. That lame excuse was Roguish enough. But then Mayfield outdid himself. He took the info that his Democratic opponent, Kathy Lowe, provided to Vote Smart and twisted it into half-truths, which he used to blast her in his Voters' Pamphlet statement. For instance, Lowe says in the Vote Smart Test that she supports a ban on semi-automatic weapons; Mayfield translates that to say she supports a "ban on hunting rifles." Similarly, Lowe says she wants the so-called income tax "kicker" returned to citizens--unless education is not adequately funded. Mayfield condenses that qualified answer to state that Lowe wants to "keep kicker for programs." Mayfield insists "it's not chicken" for him to duck the test, then use it to hammer Lowe. And he claims (presumably with a straight face) that he didn't distort Lowe's positions. The folks at Project Vote Smart disagree. They sent out a press alert decrying the "unethical and intentionally misleading attack against Kathy Lowe." Actually, it's not just Lowe who suffers from Mayfield's cheap shots. He has undermined the entire Project Vote Smart effort, which relies on voluntary participation of often skittish candidates.
originally published September 9, 1998 |
