Update and correction

Isabella Lee Tibbets tells me that she did NOT vote to endorse Clay Bearnson.  She said she voted no on endorsing both the Democratic election winner, Denise Krause, and Independent candidate Bearnson.

I was confident that I saw a green check mark on the Bearnson vote, but must have been mistaken. I am sorry for the error. She wrote:

Hi Peter,

Normally I have appreciated your blog but this one I have to correct. You are in fact wrong in saying that I voted to endorse Clay. I voted NO on all 3 candidate endorsements. Please do what’s right and correct that.

Thank you for the correction.  

The exhilarating thing about being a candidate for office is that one can decide for oneself the people and positions one supports and rejects. Isabella is exercising that right.

I have written multiple times in this blog that candidates are defined not by the general nice-nice things they say, e.g., listening to voters, calls for transparency, support for progress, and assertions that one would use common sense. Instead, they are understood by what and whom they oppose. Public opposition to someone or something creates boundaries and edges in an otherwise amorphous brand.

We now know something defined about Isabella Lee Tibbetts: She doesn't think fellow Democrats in the local party should endorse or support Denise Krause or Clay Bearnson. 

She may win votes from that position. She may get raised eyebrows of surprise and disapproval, especially from people who like those two candidates. That is why her position has credibility for defining her political brand. She was willing to pay a price for a position she took, the risk of losing support. 

It is her campaign. A candidate creates a brand by burning bridges, and she has done so. 

As Leslie Gore sang in 1963. "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to." It is Isabella Lee Tibbetts' campaign. Laugh or cry, she laid down her marker.

https://www.leetibbetts.com