Silverthorn: Douglas County school board candidates rejected GOP help

As a former school board president and the current treasurer of the Douglas County Republican Party (DCGOP), I read the recent Joy Overbeck column (“The Douglas County GOP helped blow school board election”) with great interest. Would I, a party officer and participant in the party’s endorsement strategy, gain an important perspective about lessons learned and how we can improve the process for future elections and races? Unfortunately, the answer was no. Instead, I was disappointed to read misrepresentations, accusations, pejoratives, and outright falsehoods. I understand the sharp sting of election losses; raw emotions in their wake can certainly lead to bluntly expressed opinions, but do not entitle people to manufacture their own facts.

Ms. Overbeck has made much of the party’s endorsement of candidates, claiming that any support for this year’s school district tax increase was an automatic disqualifier for earning an endorsement from the DCGOP. This is false. None of this is new. (Disclosure: I myself was a school board candidate who was endorsed by the DCGOP in the same manner in 2009 and 2013.) The party has done this intermittently in school board elections for 14 years, sometimes even with Republicans competing in the same districts as happened this year, and the process was written to be straightforward. Of course, in politics, the way things go can be anything but.

It is unclear to the DCGOP officers whether the BEST slate candidates (Mr. Jones, Ms. Sumnicht, and Mr. Page) received bad campaign advice or made an affirmative choice to reject all help from the party, even after Ms. Sumnicht had earned the endorsement and a favorable vote was to take place on that of Mr. Jones. One thing that I’ve learned in politics is that it’s not for the faint of heart; any candidate “shocked and upset,” as Ms. Overbeck describes, by something as simple as being called a “liar” should consider developing a thicker skin. Not so Ms. Sumnicht, who sent a formal request to excuse herself from the endorsement, couched in generalizations and accusations that the party was sowing division after one precinct person sent an email questioning her positions.

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