A campaign in the neck Republicans are attempting to make a beachhead in the city with Diven, who has been a Republican for about a half-hour. He was elected to City Council as a Democrat, and then to the Pennsylvania House, but Diven jumped to the other party when he saw this opening, prompting a most uncivil war.
The level of innuendo and half-truths from both sides is exceptional even by the low standards of politics. These two have done everything but accuse each other of persuading Ben Roethlisberger to ride his motorcycle without a helmet, but then there are still five days until the election.
Both sides is not all sides, here, and in most places in life.
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A campaign in the neck
Thursday, May 12, 2005
By Brian O'Neill
The city has a place in the Strip District where you can dump junk mail for recycling, so my family has begun taking the flotsam and jetsam of the postal system and putting it in a cardboard box, which these days is growing heavy with political drivel.
I'm not much for reading the home version of the staked litter that rises like crocuses beside highway ramps each spring, advertising this candidate or that. But it occurred to me that if I could sift through this stuff and find patterns, I might make breakthroughs like those archeologists/garbologists who dissect our dumps.
So I dug in. Because I live in the state Senate district currently inspiring a slapfight between Republican Michael Diven and Democrat Wayne Fontana, there is no shortage of vitriol in full-color glossy print.
The first thing you notice in sifting through Diven's material is his photo coverage of the evident epidemic of citizens hunched over kitchen tables with their heads in their hands. Lone seniors, middle-class moms and dads, they're all convinced that every tax problem they have has occurred because Fontana is one of the 15 members of the Allegheny County Council.
This is astonishing. What are the odds of finding three people who even know who is on County Council?
Show of hands: Who heard of Fontana before this? Be honest now. The last time I heard of Wayne Fontana, he was leading the Mindbenders and singing "Game of Love'' in the 1960s. Remember?
The purpose of a man is to love a woman
And the purpose of a woman is to love a man,
So come on baby let's start today, come on baby let's play
The game of love, love, la la la la la love.
Must be a different Wayne Fontana. The county councilman is a Democrat and that's a Republican anthem if ever I heard one.
Be that as it may, this is an important race, historic even, because the Republicans are attempting to make a beachhead in the city with Diven, who has been a Republican for about a half-hour. He was elected to City Council as a Democrat, and then to the Pennsylvania House, but Diven jumped to the other party when he saw this opening, prompting a most uncivil war.
The level of innuendo and half-truths from both sides is exceptional even by the low standards of politics. These two have done everything but accuse each other of persuading Ben Roethlisberger to ride his motorcycle without a helmet, but then there are still five days until the election.
So far, my favorite mailing is from Diven. It seems mundane enough, just that classic family photo which is a staple of every political season: Man surrounded by loved ones: smiling young boys and wife.
Turns out, though, those aren't Diven's kids or his wife. It's his fiancee and his nephews. Close enough for government work, right?
"All my grandparents have passed away also,'' Diven told the Post-Gazette last week, "but I still pose for pictures with senior citizens. I don't think it's misleading.''
No, of course it's not. Candidates always pose with the children of their brother. It's a tradition as old as the republic itself.
It's not as if Fontana's message is particularly inspiring, though. He brags about leading the fight to cap tax reassessments at 4 percent, a move that merely transfers the shafting from one set of homeowners to another, and is better than even money to be thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional.
No matter how that goes, however, citizens should sleep well knowing that these candidates will spare no expense in finding the most unflattering photos imaginable of their foe. Neither guy is your classic leading man, but the Diven cohort is ahead here, pushing a photo of Fontana that makes him look as if he got squeezed by the mail slot on the way in.
Both parties are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars here, united only in the belief that this election could come down to the last malicious missive or insipid innuendo. And as Groucho Marx once said, when money comes innuendo, love goes out the door.
(Brian O'Neill can be reached at boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.)
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