Primary issue? Brown says ‘no’
If you’re like me — and for the sake of our nation I hope you’re not — this is a time of melancholy (which I believe was the code name for a secret, ill-fated A&M attempt to combine a popular fruit and a popular dog).
Primary day has passed, which means the end of the political phone calls for a while. I like those calls. To me, it’s democracy calling, as well as a chance to chat with new friends.
I got an interesting one Saturday from a nice young man who, though caller ID said otherwise, was not in Rocky Mount, N.C. He was pleasant in response to my insistent inquiries about the first thing he told me about a local candidate about whom he was being paid to read a script.
He wanted me to know that Garry Brown was running to become the first openly gay
county commissioner. He couldn’t tell me what county or what precinct Brown was running in, but he was sure that Brown is openly gay. That’s as far as he got before I went into my nut-guy-on-the-phone routine that’s so beloved around my house.
I resisted sharing with him anything I’m openly open about or telling him I’m now represented by a commissioner who’s openly named Bruce.
I appreciate the importance of being the first anything to do something. But I challenged the caller about why the first thing a voter should know about Brown was his sexual orientation. I asked the caller to tell me something else about Brown. He seemed flustered so I utilized my constitutional right to ask to speak to a supervisor.