Baron: Family decisions should be considered off-limits as political ammunition
Lisa Baron |bio
My mother is this sweet, petite, feisty blond haired Jewish woman full of life, love and bubbe-meisers. The word bubbe-meiser is Jewish for “old wives tale.” Its superstitious karma sprinkled amply but exclusively by Jewish women. One of the most notorious around my home growing up was that if you say something that could be somehow taken as a means of wishing yourself or someone else harm - even if it’s a joke – you must take it back. That’s why my mother will demand that you bite your tongue. And not only do you have to bite your tongue, but you have to bite it hard enough to bring a tear to your eye. She won’t just take your word for it either. In order for the misgiving to be erased for good, my mother has to physically see you push your molars down into the fleshy serpent thrashing about in your mouth.
Once when I was little I wished aloud that I would contract a hard-core case of the measles so that I didn’t have to go to junior assembly. I hated being the last one picked to dance. So for wishing I contracted measles I had to bite my tongue. If I didn’t, I might get a cracked out version of the measles, regardless of the fact that I had been properly vaccinated as an infant. My mom’s reasoning for all this was simple. She’d warn me, “Lisa Beth, if you go looking for trouble - trouble is exactly what you are going to find.”
My mother’s words of caution swirl around in my head everyday. And not just because she demands I call her everyday, but because I love her. And it seems that my mother isn’t the only patron saint receiving worship this election season. Casey Cagle loves his mother too. In fact, his once single mother is a significant part of his campaign message and the silver-haired star of his new television commercials as well. Ralph Reed loves his mother too. Although she hasn’t yet had the opportunity be the star of daytime television, she loyally attended every major political rally and function the primary campaign sponsored. Sonny Perdue’s beautiful wife Mary is a mother and a grandmother. In the Perdues’ playful and heart-warming commercials, he and his wife drip with the love and adoration of their angelic grandchildren (at least I’m assuming that’s what they are). Ah, this season is a big love-your-mother-love fest.
But wait, what’s this I see on television? In between Casey having the love of a mother and the Perdue’s picnicking with their brood, there’s a guy running for office who was sued by his mother? HIS OWN MOTHER? And then this mother-suer turned around and pointed the long arm of the law at his pregnant sister. It was then that I swear I heard the sound of needle scratching across the surface of record.
That is if I was naïve enough to believe the latest television ad by Supreme Court candidate Carol Hunstein. Hunstein wants Georgia voters to believe that while the rest of us are sending our moms cards, candy and flowers, her opponent, Mike Wiggins, was sending his mother subpoenas and court documents. But what Wiggins was actually doing, (that Hunstein’s ad dubiously forgets to mention), was saving his family by going to court to try to prevent the removal of his mother’s life support system. Trying to politicize the most personal of family decisions should be considered off-limits as political ammunition during what should be a substantive policy debate that benefits voters.
Bottom line: Georgians want to know how a candidate is going to improve their quality of life, not how fast they can try and ruin someone else’s just to win an election. We want to know if a state Supreme Court justice will miscarry justice and legislate from the bench or will they interpret the laws in the spirit and the manner as they were written and eventually passed. And maybe, in Hunstein’s case, the truth isn’t pretty. That’s why she has chosen to launch a personal, negative campaign against her opponent. I’m not the only one who has recoiled at these ads. The deceptive and intrusive commercials have caught the attention of local columnists, bloggers as well as national heavyweights including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reily. And that my friend is what my mother referred to as finding the trouble you went looking for.
Lisa Baron was Ralph Reed's communications director in his first-ever bid for elected office.