Monticellian Sally<\/a><\/em>), as the nation dealt with its first major ideological split. The differences between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republicans were deeply held and often ugly. They also sometimes became tragic. Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr, a Democratic-Republican, and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, a leading Federalist, had long standing personal issues. But the political differences made the personal animus even worse, leading to the spectacle of the next in line to the Presidency killing a leader of the opposition party in a dual in New Jersey (\u201ceverything\u2019s legal in Jersey\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\nMike Pence didn\u2019t shoot Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris isn\u2019t counting off against Steve Mnuchin: so I guess things could be worse. But we certainly are in another era where all\u2019s fair in love, war, and politics. And it\u2019s not only on the national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Etna<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The current political ugliness, where truth is often a casualty of potential political profit, extends to local politics here. Etna Township, a division of Licking County in Central Ohio just east of Columbus, is in the middle of as ugly a campaign as I\u2019ve seen for a very long time. What used to be insults and innuendo in the newspapers is now full blown attacks \u2013 and it\u2019s all on Facebook<\/em> for the world to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\nEtna faces some very real issues. What was a rural community a half-century ago, farms divided by I-70 and US 40 with soybeans on one side and corn on the other, is long gone. Now Etna, adjacent to Franklin County and \u201cnext up\u201d in the ever-expanding Columbus metro area, is dealing with competing visions of growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Powers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cold power\u201d of Etna are the remaining farmers. There are still great tracts of land in the township planted in crops. And, as one of those farmers put it to me, the land is their retirement plan. They don\u2019t have 401-K\u2019s chock full of investments. They have their acres, and those acres are worth so much more as suburban housing or giant Amazon-style warehouses than as fields of corn. So they want to sell, and head to Florida, or farther out in the countryside where they can buy five acres for every one acre here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cnew power\u201d are those suburban voters, \u201cnewcomers\u201d to Etna, but in our one-person, one-vote system, able to out-vote the \u201colder\u201d residents. The \u201cnewcomers\u201d wanted to move \u201cout in the country\u201d, though the \u201ccountry\u201d has long passed by most of this community. A half-century ago there was a \u201ctractor day\u201d at the local high school: everyone brought their own. Now only a very few kids can tell the difference between a Massey-Ferguson and a John Deere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in the center of the dual interest are the three Township Trustees, who hold the power to determine what zoning is allowed, and what can be built. The current trustees are committed to industrializing large portions of the former fields. Like the outskirts of many large cities in the United States in our era, industrialization means warehouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Visions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The suburban \u201cnewcomers\u201d had a \u201cvision\u201d of what their community should be. And that vision didn\u2019t include dozens of semi-trucks lined up on the local highways, waiting for their turn at the loading dock of a mile\u2019s long warehouse structure. But that\u2019s what they got. Etna Township now has multiple \u201cgiant\u201d warehouses: Amazon (two), Kohls, the Ascena Group, FedEx (almost completed) and some giant project called \u201cthe Cubes\u201d. Oh, and a new truck stop on the interchange (Loves) as well as soon to open Starbucks and Chipotle. The state is rebuilding US 40, the National Road, but the rest of the county roads are groaning under the weight of fully loaded semis delivering their goods. We even have a local \u201cgas price bubble\u201d. Our prices are hiked by a line of little Amazon vans lining up to refill: supply and demand in microcosm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s not just the warehouses. What kind of suburban growth should there be in Etna? When the farmer sells his one-hundred acres, does that equal one-hundred homes with acre lots, or four-hundred homes on quarter-acres? Or, \u201cheaven forbid\u201d, apartments \u2013 almost everyone opposed to that \u2013 with all the racial undertones involved. It\u2019s up to the three township trustees to decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you might expect, this much growth creates financial questions as well, and it\u2019s not just for the remaining farmers. So much money is flooding into \u201clittle Etna\u201d, that it raises concerns about who is benefitting or pocketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trustees<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
So we have the two current trustees up for re-election, one with decades in the township and the other a life-long Etna resident. And we have \u201csuburban insurgents\u201d running against them. For the current trustees, it\u2019s been business as usual \u2013 a small government that nobody used to care about, doing their best to take care of the \u201cvoices\u201d they listen to \u2013 mostly the old power structure. And for the \u201cinsurgent\u201d candidates, it\u2019s claims of corruption and \u201cselling out\u201d what Etna was supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How ugly is it? Campaigns used to be waged in the local paper, The Pataskala Standard. <\/em>The Standard <\/em>moderated the debate; if things got too far out of control Tom Caw, the editor, would simply not print it. But Mr. Caw and the Standard <\/em>are in the past. Now the campaigns are waged in social media, specifically in this community, on Facebook<\/em>. There is no moderation, no filter. Sitting at the keyboard folks feel that they can say anything they want, without regard. I call it the \u201cpunch in the nose\u201d rule. If you said some of those things twenty years ago, you would get punched in the nose. But the keyboard and screen protects you from that kind of personal responsibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSo folks say everything. We know about bankruptcies and how marriages broke up. We even have fake entities \u201cweighing in\u201d. One side created a new Facebook<\/em> page claiming to be a \u201cfree online news publication\u201d about Licking County politics. The page then solemnly intones \u201cendorsements\u201d, as if they were The New York Times <\/em>or the Wall Street Journal. <\/em> But they have only existed since yesterday (literally), and no actual names are associated with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nImpact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
It isn\u2019t just the \u201cfate\u201d of Etna Township at stake. Etna is part of a greater Western Licking County, all countryside being subsumed by metro Columbus. How many kids will be in the schools, how many Sheriff Department cruisers will be on the roads, how many more sewer pipes will be laid: it impacts all of us nearby, not just those in the Etna boundaries. So while I don\u2019t have a \u201cvote\u201d in Etna; what happens there will affect me as well. Whoever ends up as Township Trustee, a part-time job that pays $22,000 a year, will also inherit the ugliness of this campaign. That, the competing power interests and the real problems of growth, won\u2019t be going away anytime soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cwinners\u201d will earn every dollar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since 1800 Dirty politics has been around for a long time. Last week, I pointed out \u201cdirty\u201d campaigning of the early 1800\u2019s (Monticellian Sally), as the nation dealt with its first major ideological split. The differences between the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republicans were deeply held and often ugly. They also sometimes became tragic. Vice President of the United … Continue reading “Local Politics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLocal Politics : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The ugliness of our national politics are mirrored by just as ugly local campaigns. 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