Lauren Ritchie:
Ex-Lake commissioner strikes back.
Truth will out. John Lydgate, British poet and monk
Does the truth still matter? That’s what Jimmy Conner wants to know.
Every day since he was tossed from his seat on the Lake County Commission last year, he’s been seething over the tens of thousands of anonymous dollars dumped into the race to tell the lies that defeated him. Last week, he struck back. Conner filed a defamation lawsuit against Don Magruder, chair of a political action committee and producer of a self-serving blog that fancies itself a distributor of “news.” Magruder is also the chief executive officer of Ro-Mac Lumber & Supply in Leesburg.
The suit also named government and public-relations consultant Amanda Wettstein Talmage, who worked with a Mexican cement company to get permission for a sand mine in south Lake but lost when Conner cast the deciding vote in a 3-2 split.
And finally, the suit named William Jones, who is behind a tangled web of PACs that dumped more than $100,000 into the race ultimately won by the sister of the owner of Ro-Mac Lumber. (She has a substantial investment in the business, too.)
In short, Conner’s lawsuit states that the trio accused him of crimes such as selling votes, soliciting kickbacks and skimming money, along with bullying women and taking part in a “homosexual frolic” — whatever that is — in a government building. The suit says Conner is “a heterosexual male and has never engaged in any homosexual encounter.”
The most laughable accusation, however, appeared in fliers sent by the PACs. It declared that Conner was “liberal.” Hahahaha. Jimmy’s politics are slightly to the right of Attila the Hun and always have been. The “maliciously false allegations” caused him to lose the election, damaged his reputation and hurt his insurance business, the suit claims.
Magruder referred to the suit as “frivolous.” That’s accurate only in a world where the truth doesn’t matter any more, where making up whatever you please about an opponent is fair game and distorting an incumbent’s record is de rigueur. It’s “frivolous” only where spending hundreds of thousands to snow the public and essentially buy an election is just dandy, never mind that it tugs at the roots of democracy.
Good for Conner, fighting back! He’s trying to send a message — one that most people won’t undertake because of the time, expense and unpleasant personal drama: You better be able to prove what you print.
Democracy unfortunately stands on the premise that candidates lay out their platforms, and the battle between ideologies commences with voters deciding the winner. It doesn’t account for unfathomable sums of money
dropped into single campaigns to change the outcome. There aren’t rules for fighting fabricated smut.
Private individuals have a far easier time in court proving that they have been injured by a false printed accusation than do elected officials. Public figures such as Conner must prove that whoever published the claim knew it was false or acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth.
There is that word again: truth.
Truth does matter, and Conner is doing the local political world a favor by fighting the lies and halftruths with which he was smeared during the 2016 campaign. Certainly, it will be an uphill court battle, but it’s far from “frivolous.”
Here’s hoping that the former commissioner comes out on top. It would show the perpetrators that truth matters and that there are still consequences to lying.
Politics is stinky enough as it is. Most often, the truth is enough to keep a truly unqualified person from seeking office. When anonymous PACs make up “facts,” things get really messy. Just ask a trio of Longwood City Commission candidates, who got smeared in a mailer claiming they support “Las Vegas style” gambling when they don’t. Like Conner, they were the targets of a political PAC whose money can be almost impossible to trace.
Unless victims like Conner have the courage to cry foul, such attacks will only worsen, and voters will get a skewed view of their real choices. Consider that the behind-the-scences machinations allowed the winner in this particular race, Wendy Breeden, to declare she knew nothing about vicious fliers and lies. Absolutely nothing. Honest.