Attention to Detail

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Last Wednesday's edition of the Claremont Courier was interesting not just for the letter by Professor McHenry putting the community onto Bridget Healy's exaggerations, but also for containing what is in all likelihood the final campaign piece of the Larry Schroeder campaign. Schroeder has become, by process of elimination if not by predilection, the Democratic Party candidate in this nominally non-partisan campaign.

His campaign piece was a single page four-color glossy sheet (reproduced above) inserted in the paper with the ads from furnace duct cleaners and insurance seminars. Apart from giving no reasons at all to vote for him, his flyer featured not quite 70 names in largish 14-point type.

What struck us was lack of attention to detail and accuracy in this piece. Line 3 absolutely jumps out at the long-time Claremont observer: Zephyr Tote-Mann (as Schroeder has it) contended for City Council in 2003. She was quite consistent in that election in spelling her last name, "Tate-Mann". We don't know any "May Stoddard" in Claremont, but a friend of ours is Mary Stoddard who lives at the same residence as Stuart, the preceding name on the list. And to our knowledge, there is only one "Joe Lyons" in town, but his name inflates the list (by one) by being listed twice. We have very helpfully highlighted these occurrences in the image above.

We realize that these observations are picking the fly-specks out of the pepper. They are small beer. Chump change. But we here at the Insider do it so you don't have to. Our broader question is this: Why can't candidate Schroeder get a one-page flyer more right than this? He's already gotten a pass from the newspapers on his idea related to the transportation money funding the Trolley: this was to sell the money to some community needing bona fide transportation money, receive maybe 75 cents on the dollar, and bank it in the general fund. Where was Schroeder a year ago when city staff and council were considering the Trolley? Where was his good idea when it might've done some good?

So many of Schroeder's ideas don't stand up to any probing. His views on the water company, for example, are based on ignorance of the facts of the water situation. You didn't have to go the water meeting a few weeks ago to figure that out.

Still, as our old daddy once told us, "Ignorance can be cured but stupid is forever." Maybe someday Schroeder will make a decent candidate and get wider community support than that he seems to be getting from the yellow-dog Democrats such as Bob Gerecke, Gar Byrum, Ivan Light, Sandy Hester, and failed congressional candidate Russ Warner.