Sanders Shames

Houston's City Clerk Bobby Sanders has choice words for both Childers and Davis.

Daily Journal Letter-to-the-Editor - Shame on Davis, Childers for 'pig-sty' politics - I write this as a letter to Mr. Greg Davis (R) and Mr. Travis Childers (D), candidates for Congress in the 1st Congressional District special election on May 13: Having met each of you and having known of each of you by reputation and by good reference, I am led to believe that you are both good and honorable men. And, since you are both sworn public officials, there can be no doubt that you speak truly and accurately.

Therefore, I must believe that the tremendous quantity of slick, expensive mailers I have received over the past couple of weeks contain not only precise, technical truth but that the spirit and tenor of the information are also to be deemed truthful and complete.

Now that I have learned what sorry, low-down scum both of you really are by your own mutual statements, I rather conclude that you are more deserving of being shot at sunrise than elected to the Congress! As I went to the polls on the last election day, I am searched my heart to find a plausible excuse to vote for either of you, for it surely goes deeply against my principles to send an outlaw to represent me and my family.

In the final moments of indecision, I realized that you two honorable gentlemen had already told me exactly what I must do, so I proudly cast my vote for Mr. Pang. Not because I knew Mr. Pang well or because he has convinced me that he can solve all our problems overnight, but because among you, he alone seemed to be the honorable and respectable gentleman that I thought you all were.

Now, Mr. Davis and Mr. Childers, please don't take this sarcastic statement as a personal indictment, because I really do believe that each of you wants to be a good public servant. I really do believe that your dedication to task and your love of your homeland have enabled you both to be of great service to humanity in general and more specifically to the constituents you have served all these years. Just now I am disappointed beyond description with the nasty, hateful, cloudy-truth campaigns you have waged. You have mutually sullied not only each other, but the very concept of public office! There are other good people in this state and nation who would be of tremendous public service were they not deterred by the pig-sty of modern politics.

I realize that you do not shoulder this blame alone -your respective political parties have aided, abetted, encouraged, and financed much of the ugliness and rancor of this campaign. And I am equally as disappointed with those parties as they proclaim in God-like fashion that they and their goose-stepping minions are the only ones with moral authority to lead us out of the hopeless morass which they have in fact fostered by their own irresponsible partisan politics.

I am myself an appointed public official, and I have no doubt that the mere voicing of the sentiments I express here will come back to haunt me. Be that as it may …

The time has come. It’s time for free-thinking individuals to stand up and declare that they will no longer be led down the primrose path by simplistic and mean-spirited people with extremely questionable motives. And today, I have cast down my personal gauntlet! I hereby publicly declare my independence from the tyranny of party politics and serve notice that I will hereafter vote my convictions, not those of any party or power-mad group of self-appointed keepers of the public trust. How I yearn for my elected public servants to adopt a similar philosophy!

To quote the lovely grandmotherly type in the ever-present and obnoxious television spot: "Greg Davis, shame on you!" And, Travis Childers – shame on you, too.