Jenkins: Win By Hiding

Lynn Jenkins & her supporters are shocked- just shocked- anyone would dare tape record her at functions around her would-be district.

Just how dare they! These speeches aren't supposed to be available to the public! If she wanted the public to attend, she would, you know, announce the event in mass e-mails, or in newspapers, or on her web site, or by messenger pigeon, you know- she'd do something to let everyone know they were welcome to hear from the woman who wants to be their representative in Congress.

Maybe something like this, taken from a campaign e-mail sent May 29:

Finally, I will be in Garnett this Friday at 5:30 p.m. for a community barbecue at North Lake Park. There is no required cost for this event and it is open to the public, so if you're in the area, bring your friends out to enjoy some good food and an opportunity to let me know what's on your mind. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to Joshua Lewis.

Oh. So the event was public? She did invite people to attend? Then will someone tell us how on Earth Lynn Jenkins could, how anyone could, even for a second, think it was inappropriate, unseemly, or out-of-bounds for someone to tape what she was saying?

We've said it all before: She is a public official running for a public office- the public, not just the few Republicans in a room at Garnett, have every last right to know literally everything she says, thinks and believes- everything.

Furthermore, where the hell does she and her staff get off thinking it's OK to hide her from the public eye ? How on earth can anyone running for public office rationalize actively trying to keep people in the dark about where they stand on the issues? How can any American political candidate do something as un-American as work hard to keep information about them out of the hands of the voters?

Every single time Lynn Jenkins and her campaign complains about the Kansas Democratic Party taping her public functions that is exactly what she is doing.

It's disappointing.

On a side note, it's also disappointing when campaigns become childish, and while every campaign (hopefully) tries to prevent that from happening, sometimes the force of stupid takes hold.

In a stunningly poorly written article in the Anderson County Review that relates the events from Jenkins' Garnett event, the writer tosses out an accusation that the KDP's tracker was filming the license plates of people at the event. That, of course, was not that case (and whoever wrote the article gets around to saying that- four paragraphs after making the accusation)- he was actually just filming his own car, which had been covered with Lynn Jenkins bumper stickers. (Vandalism isn't funny, children- be it of cars or of yard signs. Just remember that).

You'd hope campaigns wouldn't play the sorts of games teenagers play, but, what can you expect from a campaign who tries amateurishly to hide their candidate from the public's prying eye.

A word of advice to the Jenkins campaign: Stop showing off your lack of respect for people who don't agree with you, stop showing off the fact you're in over your head, and stop proving your "New Republican Leadership" is just more of the same old backroom, closed-doors, "hide everything from the public" Republican malarkey that we've suffered through for the last eight years.

If you don't, you're screwed.