Ad Knoxeum

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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:

  1. donate money, or
  2. donate money, or
  3. donate money, or
  4. verify a recent donation of money, or
  5. 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.