The Audacity of Some People's Hope
I have to hand it to Tom Hutsler because, man, he is shameless.
The letter to constituents that many of you received from the Hutsler mayoral campaign this week is one of the more mouth-gaping, head shaking pieces of campaign literature I’ve ever read – but only because it’s from Tom Hutsler.
Mr. Hutsler keeps trying to politick me, and it’s really hilarious. Remember the other column when I talked about public servants who think they’re from Hyannis Port? The other night, he told me that Parkville residents wanted “hope and change.”
Okaaaay, Tommy Obama.
For those of you who haven’t read the correspondence, I’ll pull a few choice nuggets from the letter – and let me tell you, Mr. Hutsler has nuggets.
In the letter, Mr. Hutsler says he loves Parkville, but feels in the past few years, “some in our city government haven’t reflected these qualities in the way they perform their duties” and that he was running for mayor to protect future generations. The over the top rhetoric aside (for a public servant who will make about $13 large in salary), the part that had me sneezing milk through my nose was where he said some in the city had “plain bad manners” and that as mayor, he would “treat everyone with the respect and dignity they deserve.” His first duty would be to “restore civility to the office.”
I wonder if Mr. Hutsler was restoring civility when he threatened to “deck” Community Development Director Sean Ackerson in the middle of Main Street and cursed out Ward 1 Alderman Deborah Butcher in one of his patented public meltdowns. I wonder if Mr. Ackerson felt that his dignity was being respected. This would be laughable if he didn’t want to represent the city as mayor.
I called Mr. Hutsler to ask if it was true whether or not he tried to kick Mayor Kathryn Dusenbery and Mrs. Butcher out of English Landing when they were touring the downtown area with FEMA, because that just seemed like an incredibly boneheaded thing to do, considering FEMA was there to decide whether or not they were going to be giving him financial aid after the most recent flood. Mr. Hutsler’s strategy? Deny, deny, deny. So I asked why everyone else would lie to me and without missing a beat he changed the topic. See, one of his tenants was upset because the mayor told them to lift their merchandise one foot off the floor and that took a lot of work.
So, in other words, they were complaining that they weren’t flooded? (They should be thanking the mayor, because as we all know, she went down to the river’s edge with her magic staff and made the flood waters recede just in time. The mayor is magic.)
The Hutsler letter wasn’t a letter seeking to introduce himself to a wider audience, it was an immature blast aimed at the popular outgoing mayor – someone he and the Platte County Democrats clearly have deep seated mental issues about – and the very aldermen he seeks to “work” with. It should come as no surprise that nearly every sitting alderman has heartily endorsed the far better qualified former mayor Gerry Richardson for the office.
Yeah, I’ve taken a few runs at this board of aldermen, but believe me when I tell you that it is one of the best I have ever seen in all my years covering local government. There are some real public servants on this board, real competent people lending their expertise for the sake of the common good and they’re always open to criticism. To Mr. Hutsler, the common good is only about himself and how much he can bilk out of downtown. That’s not the mayor’s job and that’s precisely why he isn’t worth a vote. He’s not in it for you.