By Antonio D. French
Filed Monday, April 3 at 9:11 AM
Post-Dispatch columnist Sylvester Brown weighed in yesterday on the high-priced attack pieces sent out by supporters of the two school board incumbents running in tomorrow's election.
"The political material circulating for Clinkscale and Buford subtly diverts attention away from what the mayor's slate has accomplished," said Brown. "Toward what newly hired superintendent Creg Williams might accomplish. It's another slick, high-priced public relations maneuver."
That maneuvering comes via hired gun Richard Callow and a political action committee called Educate St. Louis.
As of Sunday, Educate St. Louis had spent $220,323.52 to keep Clinkscale and Buford on the school board. That is in addition to the more than $90,000 that Buford's campaign has raised and the other $80,000 raised by Clinkscale's campaign.
In addition, a group called the "Friends of Clinkscale and Buford Political Action Committee" has also been raising cash. The PAC recently launched a website supporting the candidates.
By the end of the day tomorrow, it is likely that those supporting the two incumbents will have spent more than $22.50 per vote.
6 Comments:
I can't get the Clinkscale and Buford website to load, and I'm on a high-speed connection. What's it like?
10:24 AM, April 03, 2006
Funny, I can't get it to load anymore either. It had a fancy Flash into. Then it had bios and a short list of "supporters." Not too impressive.
10:35 AM, April 03, 2006
When people are willing to spend that much money on unpaid positions, one has to wonder what the percieved ROI is for them (or their cronies). There simply has to be an ulterior motive that our children will pay dearly for in the end. No doubt it will be too late when the truth comes out.
Also, after coming in and not knowing enough about education to keep the management firm from closing much needed alternative schools, it seems that asking people to support you now because you believe Dr. Williams' alternative school ideas to be a great new initiative is just beyond bizarre!
11:16 AM, April 03, 2006
On a positive side note though, those heavy circulars make great cat-puke scoopers.
1:47 PM, April 03, 2006
Pages with Flash intros pre-supposes that all web surfers have high-speed connections and computers with fast processors.
Those pages can't be easily viewed at many branches of the St. Louis Public Library or many SLPS locations.
Nor can they be viewed very effectively in households with dialup connections and/or older computers.
(Of course, they can't be viewed in households without Internet, but that is a whole other issue.)
2:37 PM, April 03, 2006
Is this the same Richard Callow who worked for elitist, racist Tom Bauer?
7:56 AM, April 04, 2006
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