With
the August school board ballot set, I find myself in a bit of an awkward
if not a little bit of a sad situation. My opponent for the election is a young man I've known most of his life. He's name is Jeremy Buckles. He is twenty-one years old and as I understand, is still in college.
As I said, I've known Jeremy since he was a little boy playing ball at the Ruritan Park. Jeremy has always had an interest in politics and I suspected someday we would see his name on an election ballot. Just didn't think it would be against me.
Jeremy and his family are great people and have always been strong supporters for me in all the campaigns I've run. He and one of his friends even came out for me on one election day and provided musical entertainment.
A couple months ago, Jeremy contacted me to ask if I was planning to run for re-election. He was planning to run for my seat if I wasn't going to. I responded that I was going to run again. He replied that he would not be running if I was and would be supporting me. See email below.
Van
Thanks for letting me know, Van. If you had not planned to seek re-election, I did plan to run for the seat if it was open.......
....as long as you plan to run, I will not get into the race at this time. If for some reason that you do decide not to run however; please let me know, and in which case I would hope to have your support. Thanks for what you do, and as long as you are in the race then you will have my vote.
Jeremy Buckles 2/7/2012
In our communications I reminded Jeremy that there were two school board seats (A) & (B) in our district (5th) and if he still wanted to run he could run for the other seat currently held by Gary Ubben who has turned out to be a big spender of our tax dollars. I knew from past communications with Jeremy that he wasn't a supporter of Mr. Ubben. See email below.
VanThank you so much for all you do to expose the truth and represent the people of the 5th district on the school board (I wish our other school board member (Gary Ubben) would represent some conservative values, but then again I knew he wouldn't when he got elected).I know it's early, but have you thought about and made up your mind to run for re-election in 2012? We really need your representation on the board.
Jeremy Buckles 7/16/2010
Apparently, Mr. Buckles has had a change of heart about about Mr. Ubben's "conservative values" given his decision to run against me.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm a strong supporter of folks getting involved in local government and under different circumstances I could have been one of Jeremy's biggest supporters. But as bad as I hate to say it and for lack of a better word, Jeremy flat lied to me and I would never have expected that of him. Very disappointing.
You can see why I was a bit surprised if not disappointed by Mr. Buckles decision to run against me. I guess I'm just too quick to take a man at his word. But I come from a generation were a man's word matters whether you're 21 or 51. If you can't trust one thing a man tells you, how can you trust anything a man tells you.
Anyway, let the campaign begin.