Perhaps it was bound to happen, but it's still outrageous that it did. An anonymous (of course) flier distributed at the last Wake County school board meeting and online, including on the Facebook pages of Democratic school board candidates, attacks those candidates as "liberal allies" of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and urges people to "vote no" on them.
The flier includes a picture of the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, being arrested at a school board meeting and calls him and national NAACP president Ben Jealous "angry men" with "an agenda for Wake County Public Schools." It further says the five Democrats "have supported them in their fight against Wake County families."
This is despicable. It has a racist tone, which clearly is the intention, in trying to appeal to the worst instincts of voters.
And among the more outlandish statements is one that says, "We MUST vote to keep these five radicals away from our children."
The targets
The language lacks a syllable of constructive comment. It's all about hate, and trying to manufacture it against people who have sought public service to help the school children of Wake County. And even though the current school board majority put the schools in a state of chaos in the name of dismantling a successful assignment policy in favor of a "neighborhood" or "choice" system - one that could still result in schools that are woefully imbalanced with regard to family income and race - it would not be fair of their opponents to say that those in the majority should be kept "away from our children." And they haven't.
School board candidates, all of them, seem to come to the campaign with a sincere desire to serve public education. That motivation must be respected and should in fact be appreciated.
Instead, someone or some group has decided to spew hatred from the gutter in what amounts to personal attacks on perfectly well-meaning candidates.
To the source
Appropriately, Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections, says his group will investigate the flier as a possible violation of campaign finance laws. Bartlett wants to know who produced the flier and whether it cost more than $100, which would make it a campaign expenditure that must be reported. If campaign finance disclosure laws have been violated, then those who broke the law must be pursued.
Candidate Jim Martin, one of those attacked, filed his formal complaint with the elections board Tuesday. That was the right thing to do.
School board member Keith Sutton, who also was targeted, called on the members of the majority to repudiate the tactics. His exact demand was that those members "reject and condemn this type of personal attack."
Amen to that.
It's sad that in recent years the school board has been in so much turmoil, and that campaigns have become ideological and partisan, which they are not supposed to be. They have also, as a recent N&O report noted, gotten expensive as the schools have become a higher profile political issue.
Those who produced this flier should come forth, for they can be labeled cowards if they do not. This kind of tactic isn't new in politics, of course. But no matter how often it may happen, it is disgusting, every time.
