WHY ISN'T IT A CRIME TO REPORT UNFOUNDED ELEC COMPLAINTS?

The Middletown Democratic Party was unnecessarily smeared by the Republican munciipal chairman picking up a telephone and complaining about Democrats to an Asbury Park Press reporter. Whether the reporter didn't know enough to call me or didn't want to call me to respond isn't as important as the fact that when Peter Carton called the Asbury Park Press, he wanted a story done about a complaint he did not yet file with ELEC and he got it.

Of course, I fully expect Carton to file a complaint, because he does it every year. And, every year, there is nothing to his complaints, and ELEC determines this but only AFTER Mr. Carton gets his headlines in the Asbury Park Press, if the Middletown reporter at the time can be nudged into it by him. So he makes out, in the midst of a campaign, he gets a big splash, the other side is never reporterd (for what reason I have no idea) and his party and his candidate earn a cheap victory that Middletown Democrats cannot guard against no matter how right we are about the issue and no matter how available I am to the media.

Why shouldn't it be a crime to make a false ELEC complaint? Why shouldn't it be against the law to use ELEC's name for the purpose of advancing one candidate's agenda in an unfounded way?

I am not going to advocate for running a campaign based on smoke and mirrors. Patrick Short will stick to the issues. He was called about this APP article, but he is a candidate, with basically not that much to do with his ELEC accounts. The APP reporter blind sided him and didn't call me and here we are in the APP again with Carton going on about nothing, but with a headline behind him while he is doing it.

It would be a lot different if it were an offense, maybe even a criminal one, to render an unsubstantiated ELEC complaint or to publicly announce one that has no merit. I could certainly live with that. If a party has to win office using those kind of ridiculous tricks, then the people aren't getting much of a candidate. And, if a reporter has to resort to these kinds of stories then they should take a hard look at what they are doing to earn their pay every week. But there is nothing to be done about the media, it will report what it will.

It's just that locally, the APP seems very determined to report about allegations by Republicans against Democrats, but shy about reporting the reverse. For that matter, even in this case, I doubt if the Middletown Democrats are going to get a chance to get a story that tells their side of it (even though there should never have been a story about Carton's unfiled ELEC complaint in the first place in my opinion).

But we'll do the best we can and that is a lot better than doing nothing at all. The daily is already taking sides. When the APP took only Carton's side of this then it disregarded not only my voice, but the voice of every member of the Democratic Party in this township. I guess that's OK with them. I guess they're not interested in every side of something, at least not Democrats.