LTE: Little Miss Information

Wednesday’s letters: Tea party mission

Hendersonville Times-News | 09.15.2010

To The Editor: I was on the campaign volunteer e-mail list for Dan Eichenbaum.¹ When Jeff Miller won the primary, Eichenbaum’s crew was hysterical,² e-mails shot back and forth. They were positive Miller could not have won without cheating.³ Their call went out for any knowledge of voter fraud. Apparently, no one came forward.⁴

Next, they tried to force Miller into a runoff, although he had more than the required 40 percent of the votes.⁵

I voted for Miller. I was not comfortable voting for Eichenbaum. As a member of the Hendersonville Tea Party, I believe the mission of the tea party is to aid conservative candidates to get elected and correct the mess we have in Washington.⁶

Eichenbaum’s campaign manager, Jane Bilello,⁷ is now in the leadership of the Asheville Tea Party. She resigned from Hendersonville in a rage because the group would not promote her candidate in the primary.⁸ It now appears the mission of the Asheville Tea Party was to be an extended arm of the Eichenbaum campaign,⁹ and Bilello was determined to subtly undermine Miller. Washington has enough people of this caliber. We are fortunate to have a man of integrity like Jeff Miller to represent us.

Ruth Mendrala

Flat Rock

There is so much error in poor Ms. Mandrala’s letter, I am compelled to list the corrections as footnotes below.

1. Ms. Mendrala opens her letter by revealing that she is a Miller supporter who subscribed to the campaign volunteer e-mail list for Dan Eichenbaum.  Generally, these lists are places for actual volunteers.
2. Ms. Mendrala provides no evidence to support her false claim that “…Eichenbaum’s crew was hysterical…”  Her personal opinion is allowed to stand on its own merit.
3. No person involved with the Eichenbaum campaign or the Asheville Tea PAC ever made the claim that the Jeff Miller campaign cheated to win the primary.  Ever.
4. Many people came forward to affirm their disenfranchisement at the polls, particularly in Buncombe County.  This should be a concern to all registered voters, regardless of who you supported in a primary.
5. Asheville Tea PAC is on record having requested that both candidates submit to a runoff considering the number of irregularities which were reported at the polls and the narrow margin by which the winner was decided.
6. The mission of the Asheville Tea Party is to provide an organizational foundation for the execution of projects that advance our core values; those being specifically: the promotion and preservation of individual rights, Constitutionally-limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets.  The mission of the Asheville Tea PAC is to legally enable our support and promotion of those candidates for political office who best advance the core values of the Asheville Tea Party.  It remains a great mystery what the mission of the Hendersonville Tea Party is.
7. Dr. Dan Eichenbaum’s campaign manager was Matthew Hoagland.  Jane Bilello was a volunteer on the Eichenbaum campaign, as were many other members of the Asheville Tea Party and the Hendersonville Tea Party.
8. Jane Bilello resigned from the Hendersonville Tea Party for well documented reasons, none of which were “…a rage because the group would not promote her candidate in the primary.”
9. See note #6.

To the issue of advocacy journalism and the Hendersonville Times-News:

In the past, I have been contacted by the Hendersonville Times-News to verify picayune details in a Letter to the Editor such as, “Does your organization, in fact, sell coffee cups with your logo on them?”  Now, when a writer smears us from the first sentence to the last in the prominent, first Letter to the Editor of the day, not one person from the HT-N felt it appropriate to verify a single one of Ms. Mandrala’s claims.  Could it be that printing this trash serves their purposes better than filing it in the appropriate garbage can?

Once edited for errors, smears, and misrepresentations, it seems that the only accurate statement in the LTE is the writer voted for Jeff Miller.

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Read the original story at Asheville Tea Party