The Scene is Set
Though both Kathy Dusenbery and Bill Quitmeier won their respective primaries by wide margins a few voters expressed surprise over how many votes their opponents received.
Combined, Dusenbery and Quitmeier have about 35 years worth of public service in Parkville. During the election, they both garnered roughly a combined 2,000 votes.
Their competition took roughly 800 votes. Since both opposition candidates did minimal campaigning, those votes can only be described as protest votes. So then, looking at both election results, I can only conclude that Quitmeier’s negatives are a lot higher than Dusenbery’s.
So the question becomes why is that? For starters, Quitmeier was mayor for 11 years, Dusenbery was mayor for four years. It’s simple math: Quitmeier has pissed more people off than Dusenbery has.
My column last week poked fun at a recent run-in I had with Bill Quitmeier in, what I graciously termed, his “gunslinger” mode (aka “Billy the Q”). I received a few e-mails after the article, some of them mentioning their own experiences sparring with Mr. Quitmeier. And I know a few people who speak of their duels with Mrs. Dusenbery, too.
That starts to get a little old. You have to forgive a few outbursts from our politicians from time-to-time (and outbursts against publishers don’t count). I’ve seen the incredible amount of irrational crap they have to take from angry citizens, the amount of gossip they have to rise above from chatty-Cathy at the coffee klatch, the weeks they have to let their spouses read the newspaper and give them brief synopses of stories written about them, not to mention the amount of terminally boring meetings they have to sit through. What do people expect? That you can survive three decades in neighborhood politics without fighting? You learn in a fight to hit hard and often – and preferably first.
Fact is, they’re both good public servants. This doesn’t make them saints. To be sure, in addition to the personal satisfaction one feels in serving the public (heh…yeah, lots of satisfaction there) there’s a lot of ego involved. Don’t think Mr. Quitmeier wasn’t flattered when Democrats asked him to run against Mrs. Dusenbery and outgoing Commissioner Tom Pryor.
A group of militant Platte County Republicans, vaunted strategists who feel they’ve been shunned by the majority of the party, want to see Mrs. Dusenbery lose – partly because she hired a Democratic strategist and not them, and partly because they want to show the rest of the party just how much they’re needed. It’s a traiterous, self-indulgent move that Mr. Quitmeier is seeking to exploit. Let’s see how much baggage he takes with him as he tries.
With that, our scene is set until next November. Look to this space for the only truly independent and informed takes on all the local races of import.