This candidate’s dog bit my dog and attacked my wife
The Town of Pompey, where I live, is essentially ungoverned. We have no cops. The firefighters volunteer. The Code officer works a couple of hours a week. Same for the judges. There’s the school our kids attended, but that’s run by the School Board, not the town. We don’t manage any parks. There’s no municipal water, no gas lines, no zoning.
What we have is snow. Our most important public servants are the snow plow drivers. They keep us moving in winter, and their boss, a guy named Tom, has been elected Highway Superintendent year on year as long as we’ve lived here. One time, Tom’s brother Bob, who clears the road by our house, stopped the plow to yell at me that my car was sticking too far into the road. I hollered an apology over the roar of his big diesel truck, moved the car, and we’re fine. It’s that kind of small town.
November is approaching, and with that comes the snow, and Election Day. Normally I wouldn’t care enough about a local political race to opine, especially about a race in our town, a tiny, spread-out, beautiful, rolling hills piece of Onondaga County, a place where most of us like to live ungoverned. But there’s a guy named Greg running to take over the snow plows, and Greg is bad news.
From all I can tell, Tom does a good job. Greg, the guy running a smear campaign against him, is on the Town Board. He used to live up the street from us, and he had an Australian cattle dog named Seamus. Seamus wasn’t a bad dog, it’s just that Greg left him chained up all day in the backyard. For a dog bred to chase cows all day, that leads to a lot of frustration. One day Ellen was taking Gracie, then our brand new puppy, for a walk when Seamus broke his chain and charged out into the road. Gracie got bit, Ellen went into Mama bear mode, scooping up Gracie in her arms. Then Ellen got attacked. There was blood.
I walked up the road to talk to Greg. As usual, he was drunk. I told him what had happened. He had to have known something was happening, since I had heard Ellen screaming from all the way down the road. I’m pretty sure he heard it and just didn’t come out. Greg didn’t say much, but I assumed he would do the right thing, as any reasonable neighbor would do. Did I mention that Greg is a member of our Town Board?
The second time the dog attacked Gracie and Ellen, I stomped down the road and banged on Greg’s door. He tried to hide out (most bullies being cowards at their core) but I kept banging until he figured I wasn’t going away. What happened next wasn’t pretty and it didn’t take long. I told Greg angrily that he had better do something to take care of the problem with his dog, which had by this time bitten my dog twice and assaulted my wife.
Before he slammed the door, he told me to perform a sexual act that is anatomically impossible. Yeah, three words.
That’s reason enough for me to ask you not to vote for Greg.
But this small town politics gets even crazier. I called the Town Animal Control Officer. I got no answer. A few days later I found out why. Our Town Animal Control Officer had been arrested for animal cruelty.
What???
I called the Town Supervisor, Carole Marsh, an ally of our County Republican Chair, Tom Dadey, and one of Greg’s backers.
Marsh started by making excuses for the Animal Control Officer, insisting that this public servant had neglected more than 200 animals she was being paid to protect because she was too kind-hearted. Marsh didn’t have as much sympathy for the blood my wife or my dog had shed as she did for the woman who locked a couple hundred matted dogs in her barn, leaving them to cross breed and roll in their own feces.
I asked her to do something about Greg and Seamus.
Nothing I can do, Marsh tells me. What? Marsh is the Republican Town Supervisor. Greg is a Republican who sits on the Town Board, and runs on her ticket. She can excuse a woman who mistreats 200 dogs but can’t even speak to her political crony whose dog bit a neighbor and her dog twice?
Now Greg wants to take Tom’s job. He is once again running with Marsh. She’s got a vendetta against Tom, so much so that they tried to get him arrested for stealing from the town. Even our Republican DA said there’s nothing to charge him with.
A group of citizens have banded together to take back control of the town from this irresponsible bunch.
They call themselves Team Pompey.
They have lots of ideas for change.
Their slogan is “A Vote for Us is a Vote for You.”
That sounds good to me. I would vote for them if they just promised to not let their dogs attack my dog and my wife.
Vote Row A — Team Pompey
