Matt, Matt, and how not to make news

I went to Matt Lampke's meet-and-greet this morning, along with S&C. On the way in, the host asked us how we knew Matt, and I told him I ran a website that covered the mayor's race, so I had met him as a candidate.

We got downstairs, poured ourselves coffee, and tried to get C. entertained, during which time the host asked for our attention to make an announcement. This announcement is the focus of this post, but in an attempt to be fair, I will bury the lede, skip ahead, and say that Matt Lampke is an intelligent guy, certainly seems competent, and from the time that he became the first of the eight candidates to announce, I've been impressed with the level at which his campaign has its stuff together. I also, however, have reasons for not personally supporting him given the presence of other credible candidates, which I discussed (here and here) back at the time he announced his mayoral candidacy, which will help give some context here.

See, I wasn't paying much attention as Mr. Lampke discussed the issues facing Bexley, as the first announcement was to call our attention to the presence of Matt Damschroder, resident of Bexley, and "friend and supporter" of Matt Lampke. For those of us who didn't already know, the host told us Mr. Damschroder's title, which is Executive Director of the Franklin County Board of Elections.

So, one of the key figures in the controversies surrounding the 2004 presidential elections, who is also the person in charge of running the Bexley Municipal Elections, including collecting, tabulating, and reporting the votes, is apparently publicly supporting one of the candidates. And not just any candidate, the only registered Republican in the bunch.

Mr. Damschroder is a resident of Bexley, and his position certainly shouldn't be a cause to disenfranchise him, so I would like to say that he certainly should have a personal preference in the Bexley Mayoral race. I would also take the opportunity to point out that Matt D. did not utter a single word during or after this announcement. I doubt it was his idea to publicly endorse a candidate. But as a matter of fact, he did nothing to refute the statement, which was made by someone who knew that there was a blogger in the audience. So I have to assume they wanted y'all to know.