On Monday, 12/21/20 the KC Star ran an article about the political divide in Shawnee, Kansas. Various individuals were quoted for the article.
Two that stand out for the volume of their quotes were former council members Stephanie Meyer and Jeff Vaught. Apparently these two have a problem in handling rejection.
They were quite critical about the fact that recent local elections have resulted in the increase of individuals who lean towards a conservative philosophy on the city council. Would they have been as critical if the elections had gone the other way? I doubt it. They say they are concerned because local elections are supposed to be non-partisan. Golly gee, that just means that there is no party affiliation listed on the ballot. Can candidates and elected officials really be non-partisan? These two jokers are whacky. People run for office based on what they want to accomplish (their agendas). And when elected they push those items. And that means that the only time someone having an agenda is bad is when that agenda runs counter to yours. Do I smell a little hypocrisy here?
These two pillars of pomposity apparently can't get over rejection. They both were strong advocates for the Shawnee Community Center which went down in a city wide election 72%-28%. Meyer lost in her bid to become mayor of Shawnee.
Vaught has a more colorful history of losses (and some victories). Let's start with the fact that he was elected to the city council in 2009 and reelected in 2013. Now it gets interesting. He ran in 2015 in a four way primary election for mayor. He did not make the cut, so he never got to the general election. City wide he was not in the top two. What was interesting is how the voters of Ward III (his ward) rejected him as shown by just that ward's results:
Distler 229 26.29%
Pflumm 216 24.80%
Segale 145 16.65%
Vaught 261 32.26%
Translation: 2/3 of the electors in his ward did not want him as mayor. Were they finally seeing that his concepts were not what they wanted?
Now let's move on to 2017. There was a three way primary for his council seat in Ward III. Again, he did not finish in the top two. Whoops, were the voters in Ward III, rejecting him? Again!!! Had they had enough of his philosophy and braggadocio? What were the numbers?
Adrian 415 31.16%
Myres 609 45.72%
Vaught 308 23.12%
Wow, almost 8 out of 10 voters in his ward told him to hit the road.
Is it at all possible that the voters in Shawnee do want change from the philosophies of folks like Meyer and Vaught?
