Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
It’s political mailer season! In the next few days, prepare to have your mailbox inundated from people with nefarious purposes, masquerading as “citizen committees” who you haven’t heard a peep from since the last political season. These mailers serve NOT to educate the public about actual issues inside of Newport Beach, but to trash people who want to prevent outsider (and very well-funded) agendas from moving forward. This political season, you can expect to have hit pieces on just about everyone who is running EXCEPT for a few people who are actually sponsored by these well-funded outsiders.
Here’s how a typical campaign works: You support PersonX, and PersonX is a popular person. So Special-Interest-Group spends a bunch of money sending doctored photos of that person to cast them in the worst possible light, saying “Can you really support PersonX? Many people say they hate puppies.”
This mail is not designed to educate, it is designed to scare and confuse people at the last minute who are filling out their ballots. They then question their own judgement and say “Well, I was going to vote for PersonX, but if he hates puppies, I might just vote for the other guy, instead”. This is exactly what they want.
Negative ads are targeted towards people leading in the polls, in order to “take them down a few points”. As the leading candidate in District 5, the negative ads began on me about 2 months ago.
So far, they have stated that they say I want to “de-fund the military”– an absurd claim that I have already rebuked. I’ve had a very long history of supporting our vets through fundraising and volunteering.
As a software developer, I have also accepted “bitcoins” in the past. A mailer that went out on me listed all kinds of nefarious criminal activity in which bitcoins were involved, and then said something to the extent of: “and Mike Glenn uses those too– what’s that say about him?”. Yeah, well, I also use cash… but that’s not scary enough.
So if you get these, laugh at them. Note who they are coming from for future referencing. Negative mailers are almost always outright lies or unrecognizable distortions of the truth. Better yet: Tell your friends and neighbors about this type of manipulation. Let them know that special interests are attempting to play on their emotions rather than logic.
In a fair and just world, nobody would need to deal with this kind of trashy campaigning– but as we’ve all seen and as we all know, the world of politics is neither fair nor just.
In short: I am neither an international bitcoin-using drug smuggler nor someone who wants to de-fund the US military. So please, help me mitigate some of the potential damage by grabbing a flyer and laughing about the absurdity of it with your neighbors– then ask them to vote for someone with a proven trackrecord in our city… ask them to vote for Mike Glenn!
