www.fotisforsheriff.com

It’s now fully apparent that Jim Fotis, Jeff Doyle and Ted Deeds have shown their true colors. A campaign based entirely upon lies, denials, obfuscations and personal insult is no way to get elected. But these guys were so dirty that they apparently believed that they had no other alternative but to distract people away from their record of gross mismanagement at LEAA.

Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, where will they scurry to next?

Glendell Hill 3,971 votes = 61.20%
Michael W. Messier 1,340 votes = 20.65%
James J. Fotis 1,177 votes = 18.14%

Now, where are Ted Deeds and Jeff Doyle hiding? Are they back under the rock they crawled out from under?

Wow! Thanks for sharing that link…my oh my if everyone reads that Fotis is dust! That behavior is beyond unethical….above the law attitude gets one nowhere….ask Stoffy and Messier…..

Is this guy on crack? Has everyone had a chance to read some of the investigative reports that I posted links to? If you only have time to read one report, READ THIS ONE!!!!!

Bankrolling Beltway Badges
Meet the Law Enforcement Alliance that violates the law with IRS impunity
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=1713

And THEN ask yourselves if Jim Fotis and LEAA have been trying to mask what is (at the very least) grossly unethical behavior.

Ironic that a guy who hides behind a pseudonym invents conspiracy theories about somebody who uses his real name (that happens to be like one of the three most common names in the country).

My apologies to the rest if my tone was less the civil; I have an aversion to loonies.

The sad thing (or, perhaps, luckily for us) is that, by using these tactics, he has underestimated the activists in PWC who are able to recognize a line of excrement when they see it. Any political hopes Fotis may have had here have been dashed in their infancy…or certainly will be. That doesn’t say much for his judgement.

Time is drawing to a close…

Think about it… attack me all you want but where is the record of your candidate on THIS SPECIFIC campaign promise…. Remember it was his words, not mine!

George Soros funded operatives
The Trial Bar
Various defeated Democrats (judges and politicians)
and folks like Molly Ivins and Sarah Brady….

We do the conservative movement a diservice when we do the bidding of those folks for the short term fun of attacking an effective conservative group like LEAA…. don’t you think?

What I see here looks to me like a classic glass half-empty / half-full difference in perspective that reminds me (with chilling clarity) of a past manager I had years ago; for the purpose of analogy I’ll call him Tom. Now Tom took over our department after a complete train wreck of a prior manager got fired (not criminal like Stoff, but a total screwup.) Tom’s entire management philosophy was built on simply not screwing up like the guy before. He literally set out, with fanatical precision, to precisely hit the minimum level of expectation without fail on the logic that our department looked great if it never missed it’s mark, never came up short, but in the process we never excelled either. Some folks loved Tom, mostly those who had been with the company for years and had become absolutely twitchy about having a departmental fiasco bite them in the tail. They said that Tom “kept his eye on the ball” and embraced reliable mediocrity in the wake of stunning ineptitude.

I couldn’t support that view. The world is always moving ahead and if you are not moving with it, you are getting left behind. Those who felt that the department should “be all it could be” (rather than simply stay ahead of the worst it had ever been) looked at Tom as a guy who simply wanted to insure his own career. Take no chances and you never have egg on your face. Never come up with a new idea and you never get left holding a dumb idea. I understand it, I can even sympathize a bit, but at the end of the day that didn’t work for me. Simply maintaining the status quo, no matter how splendidly done, no matter how dire the history of failure, was not my idea of leadership — at best it was “maintenance” of the job, making sure that the gears just kept turning.

It was easier to see both sides after I left the company and got some distance. I could see how the pro-Tom side wanted nothing more than to get up and NOT have a turd dropped in their lap without warning (sorry, a vulgar reference, but it fits the time.) But I could not see the value in pure disaster-avoidance, I wanted to make a difference, to raise the bar even if it meant missing a mark now and then (my younger and more energetic days…)

I think Tom ran his department in good faith and to his credit he was a miracle worker given the act he followed. He was efficient, pragmatic, detailed… a whole lot of good things. But he was uninspired and lacked whatever spark it was that sees a challenge and rises to it. He was always reactive and never proactive, so we were always chasing fixes rather than planning ahead. To the company bureaucrats Tom was a hero and to the enterpreneurs he was a boat anchor. Both sides were equally passionate on their view.

I have no desire to take a side in this growing mudfest, the only reason I chimed in at all was that I thought a re-focus on the issues (and not the personalities) would be of more value to the rest of the average Joe’s like me who have no real interest in the whole blog thing and just want to get some facts. That effort seems to have met with minimal success so I am bowing out with my takeaway from all this:

Hill took over after a flaming train wreck and largely by not committing felonies, by getting rid of those who did, and by focusing almost exclusively on the mechanics of keeping the train on the track and nothing more, is the hero to many. Maybe that is enough for a lot of people, as you say AW, that is all the “representation” you are looking for.

On the other hand are the people who want something more. A new kid safety program, a new way to use inexpensive technology to protect citizens from violent crime, whatever. To them “just getting there on time every day” is not leadership, it is just efficiency. These folks look for leadership in the form of creativity, positive change, and not just in avoiding the potholes.

Nobody has cited some new program or initiative Hill has launched, in fact almost all of his supporters focus on his success in terms of rebuilding the fundamentals in Stoff’s wake. Fine. I don’t think it is a fatal indictment of Hill to say he hasn’t come up with some smart new idea given the debacle he inherited when he walked into the office - maybe he just didn’t have the bandwidth or maybe he just isn’t the “new idea” kinda guy (not everybody is, and sometimes what we need is just a good mechanic to keep things running.) But Stoff and his mess is now the past. The question now is where do we go from here? How long will “its better than Stoff did” be the measure? When do we say “Great job, last problem solved” and hand-off to someone with a different skillset who can take on the next generation of challenges? If you are progressive minded, that seems a fair and logical question, not a slam against anybody.

Lost in all the tedious verbal swordplay is simply the choice between what is put forwardby their respective camps as (and for pete’s sake don’t go on a flame war on this) “predictable/reliable” vs someone “more inventive/dynamic. ” I don’t think that either desire is inherently bad (badly argued maybe) — just a matter of what each of us is looking for in PWC.

I’m wrapped on this issue guys; thanks for the replies, weblinks, etc and for the courtesy shown to me. Best to all on the 12th.