Ad Knoxeum
I exchange pleasantries with the mayor from time to time, usually at Tealoha in conversation with mutual acquaintances. Years ago, I photographed him holding a tiny mechanical chicken and a coffee cup. He’s a good sport.
So while I wouldn’t say that I know the mayor, or that he knows me, we are dimly aware of one other. When we pass in the street, he gives me the smile of half-recognition and I give him the smile of being half-recognized.
We’ve had enough casual contact over the years, anyway, that I was a bit deflated yesterday to receive from his reelection campaign an envelope sent by a marketing firm inviting a person who lived at my address over seven years ago to do one or more of the following five things, reworded here for clarity:
- donate money, or
- donate money, or
- donate money, or
- verify a recent donation of money, or
- donate time
It made me wonder what running for mayor in a town of 62,000 costs these days. And whether a shareholder at one of Greenville’s largest law firms really needs my help bankrolling such a thing.
But then, I don’t speak politics worth a damn, do I?
Or campaign finance.
Nor do I want to.