ANOTHER CONGRESSIONAL WANNABE
I don’t know anything about Chris Collins.
Except what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.
Like Saturday, after the Nunda Fun Days parade, as he walked back to his car after completing his waving march down the center of the street.
The latter half of the parade was still going on, and people were lining State Street, and he walked behind them. Not speaking to them, not interacting with them.
Even when the Vietnam veterans marched by.
In the order of march, a small color guard of grandfathers in fatigues, carrying the flag of the United States, passed in its turn down the center of the street.
And people watching from the sides applauded and cheered. Some stood in respect and removed their hats.
But Chris Collins walked on by.
Oblivious.
A man apart.
Neither participating in nor even seeming to notice the ovation he hurriedly passed.
One more millionaire demanding a seat in Congress.
And the Erie County Republican Party seems intent on giving it to him. Like it did to Chris Lee, the silver spoon too stupid to get laid without making it a national scandal, and like it tried to with its last candidate, a woman who somehow managed to lose one of the most Republican districts in America to a bona fide liberal.
Unfortunately, the congressional district I live in stretches into Erie County, a cesspool of political corruption. And Chris Collins is its spawn. A one-term county executive who vowed six months ago that he would never again run for office, he smells slop in the trough and he wants to put his snout in.
So he’s running for Congress.
And three weeks from today – on June 26 – there will be a primary which will pit Chris Collins against David Bellavia.
Collins has money and Bellavia has balls.
And values, and morals, and a lay-it-all-on-the-altar commitment to constitutional principle.
You don’t have to ask where Bellavia stands, because he’s already stood there – in the pulpits of his faith, in the hot gaze of the media spotlight, and in the blood-stained combat boots of the American Army.
But this isn’t about Mr. Combat Boots.
This is about Mr. Wing Tips.
I don’t know anything about Chris Collins.
Except what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.
And what I’ve heard is his political ad that boasts of his early days in business, when he charged his credit cards to the hilt to stay afloat.
That’s what he said.
That’s what he thought was so important that it had to be in his introductory political advertisement.
He irresponsibly used high-interest debt he didn’t know he could repay in order to sustain short-term operations of his business.
Well, not to be a killjoy, but we’ve already got plenty of politicians who operate on that principle. In fact, there a lot of us who believe that politicians just like that are what are going to kill this Republic.
Debt is poison. It stands poised to strangle the last life from our nation’s once prosperous future.
We don’t need any more people accustomed to racking up the credit cards. We need some pay-as-you-go people. We need someone who knows that you pay down debt, you don’t ratchet it up.
We need a fiscal conservative, not a fiscal fool. Any 18-year-old can charge a credit card to the hilt; from a congressperson, we expect something a little different.
I don’t know anything about Chris Collins.
Except what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.
And what I’ve seen, with disgust, is him working the crowd at my town’s Memorial Day service. As veterans and scouts and flags made the short walk down our Main Street, he glad handed, and as we gathered beneath the flag at our Veterans Park, he sacheted across the dais, shaking hands and kissing babies.
We’d come to honor our war dead.
He’d come to whore votes.
Memorial Day services are for a lot of things. Campaign appearances aren’t one of them.
I don’t know anything about Chris Collins.
Except what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.
And I’ve seen that more than a month into his declared candidacy, he has no website. Google for yourself. There is no place where he explains where he stands or what he stands for. He has no positions, he has no point, he just has a candidacy.
He’s got his millions, he bought his turn, and, dammit, he’s going to take it.
Likewise, more than a month into his declared candidacy, after repeated requests, he still hasn’t found the time to come on my radio show. Arguably the media outlet reaching the largest percentage of the district he seeks to represent, and he just can’t get near a telephone between 9 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon.
Not that he has to talk to me.
But he should talk to the voters. He should make the case. He should be more than a media buy. He should think this election is more than a silver platter waiting to be handed to him.
I don’t know anything about Chris Collins.
Except what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.
And that doesn’t impress me much.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2012
