Good Morning Key West

Here is an email exchange with Heather Carruthers, prompted by my “District.3? post yesterday. Below it are related develpments and musings. Sloan
 
 

Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:41:48 -0700
From: heather@voteheather2008.com
Subject: Your Blog
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Sloan,

I have received a few e-mails today regarding a couple of rumors that your website printed regarding my campaign. I am disappointed you didn’t fact-check these rumors prior to publishing them.

1. According to your blog “Mayor Mario DiGennaro endorsed my Democrat opponent Heather Carruthers on Bill Becker’s US 1 Radio show yesterday morning.” 

Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro did not endorse me on Bill Becker’s radio show yesterday (Friday 8/29/08). Here is a verbatim transcript of their exchange which is available in audio form at http://www.us1radio.com/morningmagazine.cfm 

Mario Di Gennaro: “Go back to the elections.. I, one thing I was very pleasantly surprised about .. I’m not picking .. one person who runs against another ..  I really admired Heather Carruthers..the way she spoke to Sonny and thanked him for his service and everything… I also want to thank my other fellow commissioners out there for their service…. But Heather did a marvelous job and I really respected her for it … I was pleasantly surprised”Bill Becker : “Are you backing Heather in this ?“Mario Di Gennaro:”I’m not backing and I’m not getting involved. I’m not backing anyone. I was there.. I happened to be there when Heather walked in and spoke to Sonny and spoke to Dixie and thanked them for their service  .. it impressed me so I say what I think.”

Hi, Heather.
 
I wrote that the thing about Dixie was a rumor I had heard and could not believe my ears. That was true. And I asked you to clear it up publicly. Your campaign website received, I meant to send it and believe I did, a copy of today’s post. The Dixie and Heather rumor was getting spread around before it came to me. You still need to clear this up publicly. I will do it on my blog.
 
Thanks for sending the verbatim transcript from Mario’s interview by Bill Becker. If what Mario first said about you isn’t a endorsement, which he then tried to make it not sound like it wasn’t, then what was it? When I asked  someone you know who is prominent in Key West politics that question, after he said it wasn’t an endorsment, he said, well, yeah, that’s what it really was. He added that Mario was trying to work something to Mario’s advantage.
 
This, too, you need to make clear publicly: You don’t want Mario’s support. You already made clear how you feel about him and Sonny, and the entire County Commission, in what you wrote about how Sonny and Mario treated Diane Bureldsen at the last Commission [Meeting]. That Mario then was so complmentary of you on Bill Becker’s show not very long after you took him and Sonny to task was a bit hard to take in. Maybe Mario never saw what you wrote about him and Sonny?
 
FYI, someone you know well, who, in my estimation, has been one of your strong supporters, told me yesterday that I need to be diligent and work hard in my own campaign, because the Keys need me. Today, this same person told me that you soft-pedaled on the Gang of Three on Election Night, when Bill Becker asked you a question about them.
 
Bill gets my posts and tells me he reads them. He had received the one you wrote about Sonny and Mario. The Gang of Three has been a big issue for quite a while. I have been at candidate forums with you. I don’t remember you speaking of the Gang of Three at those forums. I saw that you were soft-pedaling the serious stuff. I only saw you get riled up and speak out when something very close to home happened, which was Sonny’s anti-gay, bigoted remark to Kay Thacker about Diane Bureldsen.
 
I told someone today that it’s not enough to speak out when you get punched in the belly where you live. You have to do it across the board. And, I would think, you don’t let people whose behavior you don’t like smozzle up to you in public, on the most popular Keys radio station, and get away with it. Hell, if Mario had something like that about me, I would have called Bill Becker and insisted that he give me equal time, so I could make perfectly clear, on the air, what I thought and felt about what Mario had said.
 
Sloan
 
 
I am now hearing on the “Coconut Telegraph” word, rumor, or whatever label fits, that the Gang of Three have thrown their resources behind Heather in the District 3 race. This would not suprise me, if it is true. Clearly the Gang of Three have Carlos Rojos on their most wanted list, after he whomped the incumbent Sonny gang member out of the race in the recent primary. Surely the Gang is smarting doubly because the Dixie gang member got whomped even more by Kim Wigington. And surely the Gang is worried that the Mario gang member’s days as County Mayor are short. I never expected to get any support from the Gang of Three or their backers, and I didn’t expect them to back Carlos, so that leaves them with either backing Heather in the District 3 race, or staying away from the polls. Personally, I’d rather see them stay away from the polls. But I don’t expect that to happen because I say it, which leaves me saying that I’d like to see Heather publicly tell them that she doesn’t want their support or votes. After what she saw happen at the last County Commission meeting, I cannot imagine her wanting anything to do with any of the Gang members, or any of their followers. For her to let them start fawning over her now would be about the same as prostitution, wouldn’t it?
 
Sloan Bashinsky, non-affiliated county commission candidate, District 3