I was going to let my thoughts here go silent, but the events of this past week compel me to speak out.
Last night, at a social function, I had one friend tell me that he was at a local auto shop when a big man walked in, his truck covered with the name Kelsey in big letters.
Minutes later, another friend — Mike Kerner, the Libertarian candidate for the very Senate seat that I had been running for — informed me that the very same man we had just talked about was encouraging voters to write him in on the ballot.
The man being talked about was none other than Greg Smith, the far-right-wing Republican State Senator who lost his seat (yes, the same Senate seat I ran for and Kerner is running for) in the August primary.
Smith used the murder of his child to get elected, one of the most disgusting things anyone in politics can do. He went on to aid and abet in Brownback’s destruction of Kansas — and yet somehow I’m the “cruel and cold-hearted” one?
Wait a minute. Where did this “cruel and cold-hearted” thing come from?
About a week ago, there was a video posted by Democratic State Senate candidate Spencer Kerfoot, who is running against another Brownback Republican, Rob Olson. In the video, Kerfoot had just spoken at a candidate forum put on by the League of Women Voters — and Olson was a no-show. The video simply shows Kerfoot and a LWV volunteer asking where Olson was.
This was not surprising to me at all. Throughout the primary, incumbents like Olson or even Smith had made a habit of not showing up to such forums. I could never presume to guess why, except that they are too afraid to face their constituents.
I commented on the video something to the effect of this.
Minutes later, someone who I think lived in Kerfoot’s Olathe district replied that she didn’t live in my district, but would never have voted for me because of the “cruel and cold-hearted” things I had said about Smith. I replied that I would apologize for the tone, but not the substance of what I’ve said, because everything I had ever said about Smith was true.
Allow me to quote my own quote from the March 1, 2016 Pitch piece on the 21st Senate District race:
"Each time he's run, he's done so using the death of Kelsey Smith as a political prop," Czerniewski tells me on a frosty Thursday morning at Lenexa's Black Dog Coffee. "He continues to push it for his political gain, and I have no problem calling him out for that."
Apparently, this person who called me “cruel and cold-hearted” didn’t have a problem with my tone but the fact that I would call out Smith at all! She even went as far as to compare Smith to John Walsh, the television host and investigator behind America’s Most Wanted.
Both Smith and Walsh lost children in a grisly and unfortunate way. As someone who has never been a parent, I cannot imagine how that must feel.
That’s where the comparisons stop.
John Walsh, in the aftermath of his son’s murder, became a television show host and criminal justice activist. Walsh’s work helped bring many criminals to justice throughout the US, introduced laws in regards to sex criminals, and introduced efforts to keep children as safe as possible.
John Walsh never did the following:
- use the death of his child to try to get elected to public office.
- back the dangerous and infamous Brownback income tax cuts which have effectively destroyed the Kansas economy.
- claim in an interview that income taxes are “legitimized theft,” despite never having worked a private sector job in his life.
- sponsor a bill that would make it legal for Kansas citizens to concealed carry anywhere in the state without a permit, making out streets incredibly unsafe and now endangering students in Kansas colleges (where concealed carry will unconscionably be legalized next summer).
- bully a then-sitting State Senator in a public forum.
- sicced his spouse on a videographer for telling the truth about him.
Greg Smith, on the other hand, did all of these things — and many more, some of which have been told to me confidentially.
Please realize that when you are defending Smith from my criticism, this is what you’re defending.
While I have no idea what it must be like to lose a child, I do know what it feels like to lose someone close. In December 2010, I lost my mother. In July of last year, I lost a close friend and political ally.
Cheryl Czerniewski and Ryland Lundy will always be close to my heart, but I will not — and did not — use their passing to further my own political ambitions.
I, for one, really do believe that the dead, regardless of how they died, should be allowed to rest in peace.
After losing my primary, I’ve let my aspirations toward political office go by the wayside and thrown my vote toward a candidate still in the race (if you had read my previous post here, you can easily guess who I voted for and why).
And one final and friendly reminder:
Greg Smith lost his primary as well.
So, why are we even talking about him on a Friday evening? Or commenting about him on social media?