DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711070201

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: IDA KAY'S PORTSMOUTH 

SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan 

                                            LENGTH:   75 lines

CITIZENS HOLD SOLUTION TO POLITICAL MUD-SLINGING

No wonder people get turned off of elections.

The most recent campaign is just about the dirtiest I've ever witnessed. And I've been working on a newspaper somewhere for 50 years.

The low standard for campaigning in my mind still belongs to the time Willis Smith beat one-time University of North Carolina president Frank Graham in the ugliest U.S. Senate race in anybody's history. Even though I was still a student, I remember it well because his foes used race and communism to defeat Graham. It was only some years later that I learned one of the masterminds behind the smear was Jesse Helms, now a North Carolina senator.

But each election in recent years has come close to erasing that low-water mark in my head.

I was quite concerned at some of the last-minute tactics in our local election for the 79th House seat.

A day before the election, somebody saturated mostly black precincts with flyers proclaiming Democratic candidate Johnny Joannou is a racist. I also have heard that others were riding around some of those neighborhoods broadcasting smears about Joannou.

The fact that somebody would inject race into a campaign, making unfounded statements about a candidate at the last minute, shows how ruthless people have become.

People who would do that have no concern for the city. They're just hoping to pick up a few votes from people who want to believe the worst about candidates.

I never have understood those who claim to be interested in the community, but who would attempt to stir up false issues - race or otherwise - to gain votes or power.

We have plenty of racism. We have plenty of sexism. We have plenty of discrimination. But we don't solve any of it by creating false campaign issues. Real and serious concerns are obscured.

The election this year reminded me of P.T. Barnum's old comment about suckers born every minute.

The ``no car tax'' notion that made this whole state campaign a circus shows just what suckers we all are in an age of sound bites and slogans.

Anybody who thinks we can do away with the personal property tax and not pay that tax somewhere else is a really gullible sucker. I don't for one minute believe that if the state forced cities to do away with the tax that the city would get that money back unencumbered from the state.

And places like Portsmouth would be bankrupt without that money.

Even if we did get the money back with no strings, I would not feel really comfortable. I think any money the state has for so-called tax cuts should instead be used for education and for transportation. The irony of all ironies would be a tax reduction on motor vehicles which would encourage people to buy more and bigger cars while allowing traffic jams to grow and roads to deteriorate.

I don't like paying the tax any more than anybody else, but I'd as soon pay it on my car as on my home. Admittedly, I drive an inexpensive six-year-old car at the moment, so my tax bill doesn't equate to those of people who can afford to drive a new $30,000 or $40,000 vehicle. But then that's the way the tax system is supposed to work: those who can afford to drive an expensive vehicle or live in a big house also can afford to pay the taxes.

If the state has so much money to give back, it could do us all a favor by spending it on railroads between here and Richmond, here and Northern Virginia and between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Or by allocating money to repair existing roads or even to repair schools with leaking roofs.

But I digress off my original subject: dirty elections.

Everybody was accusing everybody in ways that seemed really irrelevant to me. I didn't believe any of them.

Why do candidates spend their time and money putting out false or half-true information. The answer is simple: A lot of voters believe them.

We as citizens must let candidates know that we will not tolerate dirty, underhanded politics. We must let them know that we want to know very specifically how they stand on issues important to us.

If elections are going to get better, we also have to set our priorities beyond ``what's in it for me?'' We must think in terms of what is best for this city, for this state and for this nation.

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