By Matthew Green
An ugly strain of politics appeared in the recent campaign for Mayor of Olympia.
An anonymous flyer accusing Stephen Buxbaum of sexual harassment during his state employment was spread on porches late at night in several Olympia neighborhoods. It was also mailed to many of Buxbaum’s supporters, falsely using the Buxbaum campaign’s own return address. In addition, the flyer was distributed via a Facebook account falsely claiming to be me (yes, me, your humble publisher; as most readers of OP&L know, I was also working on Buxbaum’s campaign).
Sometimes, when overly sensitive local political folks talk about negative campaigning, they really mean mere sharp criticism or even strong disagreement between candidates. That’s not what happened in this case. Nor was this about spinning the facts, shading the truth, calling people names, indulging in hyperbole, or any other unfortunate but relatively ordinary political misbehavior.
Instead, this was a nasty, cynical, premeditated smear. Anyone who cares for our community should do their utmost to rid this type of toxic pollution from local politics.
For the record, the accusations against Buxbaum are utterly false. Sadly, even refuting them plays into the hands of the perpetrators. Getting publicity merely of an accusation is a key goal of any smear.
The first hint to a reader as to the credibility of a flyer like this is that it was anonymous. The authors were afraid to place their names on it. That might be smart of them, because they appear to have violated both election laws and postal laws. Also, assuming that the perpetrators are active in the local political community, which seems likely, they knew that their exposure would cost them their standing and reputation.
So they lied and hid. Pathetic.
The situation created a conflict for me personally. It was a potential media story that I was directly pulled into. We decided not to run a story about it, because we didn’t think it was newsworthy. (The Olympian also decided not to run a story, because they had already seen Buxbaum’s state personnel records and knew there was no truth to the accusations. They did run an editorial criticizing the smear.)
Buxbaum won anyway, and will soon become Olympia’s next Mayor. But that doesn’t make everything all right.
The problem is not just that the smear could have changed the election. Nor that the campaign had to focus on this instead of talking to voters about real issues. Nor that Buxbaum and his wife had to spend days responding to friends and supporters who wondered why on earth they received this nasty mailing from the campaign. (By the way, the flyer failed to drive supporters away. In fact, it resulted in a burst of additional donations and volunteers for the campaign. So suck it, smear-mongers.) Nor that I had to spend hours telling people that it was not actually me who sent them a Facebook friend request and then bombarded them with anti-Buxbaum messages.
The real problem is that some outstanding potential future city councilmember may see this vile attack and think, “If that’s what politics is about, I don’t want to be part of it.” And a voter may see it and think, “Screw that, the whole thing seems awful.”
A smear like this one creates cynicism and disgust at the very idea of government and politics. Our community – any community – would be much better off if local government and politics were held in such high esteem that everyone wanted to be engaged, that everyone joined in making public decisions about our future.
Somebody out there knows who spread this flyer. Somebody heard someone brag to them about this sneaky trick they were pulling.
To that somebody: I’m asking, for the good of our body politic, for you to please expose the people who did this. Nothing will change the recent election, but holding the perpetrators publicly accountable will create an excellent deterrent during the next campaign (including against attacks on your favorite candidate), and will result in more honored and honorable local politics. ◙