Members of my generation grew up with Internet trolling, IE the use of provocative speech online, and learned quickly how to handle it: Don’t feed the trolls. It’s easy for us Millennials to spot immaturity in online discourse, and easy aggravation by obviously frivolous needling quickly reveals childish inclinations. Enter my occasional trolling of Prineville Mayor Jason Beebe, a politician on a mission to primary conservative Congressman Cliff Bentz ostensibly from the right in response to such high crimes and misdemeanors as voting to expel a leftist Republican Representative for, among other things, illegally using campaign funds to purchase a boatload of pornography. A man truly worthy of a seat in the People’s House would ignore the trolling, or hide the comments to keep their social media pages focused on better connecting with voters.
Mayor Beebe has taken the aggressively opposite approach, responding to trolling with increasingly bitter criticisms that make trolling all the more appealing. When I suggested that opposing the expulsion of Congressman George Santos for indulging in illegally procured erotica made Mayor Beebe a better fit for the Green Party than the Republican Party, he announced that he does not support the Oregon Republican Party Platform and told me to shove my opinions up my *ss.
He called me a piece of sh*t in a later post.
Then he followed up with an entire Facebook post of social media screenshots wondering why I am attacking him despite my comparatively tamer word choice.
Every election is about choices. Congressman Cliff Bentz has honorably served rural Oregonians for decades on state bodies, the Legislative Assembly, and now in Congress. He fought many hard-won battles in Salem by courageously standing up to the left without stooping to the Democratic Party of Oregon’s blistering assaults. When they went low, Bentz fought harder, and Eastern Oregon benefited. Despite Mayor Beebe’s attempts to drag the CD2 race into the mud, Congressman Bentz has focused on doing what he does best in DC: fighting for rural Oregonians. He more than earns another term representing CD2 every day.
Prineville voters, meanwhile, now know that their City Council’s presiding officer is an irritable social media fanatic with a penchant for publicly flinging profane insults at perceived political opponents in his own party. Republican voters have his own written proof that he does not support a state party platform written by committed conservatives from Coos Bay to Wallowa Lake. To compound Mayor Beebe’s political issues, Bend-area TV station KTVZ has not even received responses to public records requests regarding HR investigations that recently resulted in the immediate resignations of Prineville’s police chief and another member of the force. Prineville’s jobs page is not currently advertising a vacancy for a new chief, leading to legitimate questions about the Mayor’s ability to gain consensus on the Council about municipal priorities.
After nearly 15 years in politics, the lesson I’ve taken most to heart is that character counts. Public use of profanity and the defense of unconscionable fraud by elected officials are definitely signs of moral deficiencies. Mayor Beebe is not beyond redemption, but it appears the pressures of a political campaign may be impeding his ability to focus on the race if his main concern is an Internet troll. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on the Honorable Mayor given all that we have in common. We’re both registered Republicans. We’re both rural Oregonians. And come May 21, neither of us will be the Republican nominee for Oregon’s Second Congressional District.
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