Airing dirty laundry...

The Republican primary in District 5 just got a little less crowded (not that it was ever really crowded in the first place).

Jim Adams, who was refreshingly candid about his chances of winning, has exited the race and thrown his support behind former police chief Wayne Livesay. Adams’s reason for leaving: “dirty politics.”

“The first reason is that there was a slim chance that I could win, but more importantly, I have recently become aware of what I refer to as dirty politics,” according to Adams’ speech given Monday at Chris Merdon’s campaign headquarters.

…“There are various items that the opposition is wrongly addressing and I will not go into them, with one exception. That exception addresses Wayne Livesay as a Republican,” according to Adams’ speech.

Of course, dyed-in-the-wool Republicans don’t have a problem with pointing out Livesay’s disloyalty and certainly don’t view such actions as “dirty.” However, on the Hedgehog Report, Adams goes into a little more detail about his decision.

Greg is running scared, he has no confidence. He had a push telephone pole conducted, omitted me, and used trash questions in reference to Livesay, and has not released the results. Greg is not impressing me as a man of good character, although I want to be wrong about this, his actions are disappointing me. I made my decision after conversations with MANY GOP members. None Recommened I drop out, some even suggested, without my prompting them that I stay in. It was in these conversations that I found out my conclusions about Greg’s campaign were not mine alone. I have always placed people before party...

Still, the full details of what he calls “dirty politics” remain elusive. Anyone who has been following this race at all, however, knows that it is highly charged and borders on what could be called “dirty.” Although I think David Keelan’s work on the Hatch Act issue was generally quite good, he has continued to target Livesay and sometimes, I would argue, crosses the fuzzy line. This is from last month.

Remember to stay on message and that Wayne Livesay is:

• An Opportunist (switched to the GOP to run in a GOP district)
• Doesn’t have the convictions of his beliefs (switched to the GOP to run in a GOP district even after he publically and loudly disowned the GOP)
• Won’t endorse Sandy Schrader
• A Republican in Name Only
• Doesn’t trust that citizens know that comp-lite was a complete farse
• Listens to Charlie Feaga too much
• Precided over a police department leading to two sexual harrassment lawsuits and chalks it up to disgruntled employees (read the court records - they don’t sync up).
• Doesn’t possess the grasp for details to be a legislator

My concern is that if we don’t stay on message and allow ourselves to be distracted then Wayne Livesay will win.

Although some of these items are just silly, partisan things, others are character attacks that rightly qualify as dirty. For instance, the last one, which basically amounts to calling him stupid. Livesay ran the police department admirably for almost a decade and yet he somehow doesn’t have it in him to decide on county-level legislation? That’s the easy part. Try implementing it.

Also, I would argue that it takes stronger convictions to leave a party than it does to blindly follow one. But that’s just my opinion.

Finally, hammering the point home about the ugliness of this race is the third comment – an odd, foreboding one made by timactual -- on Keelan’s post about this story.

There is another reason that Adams withdrew, but I do not want to get into that. He knows what I mean.

May the best man win, indeed.