Steiner wrong; McGuire a viable candidate

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Re: โ€œGreen party offers substandard candidates in recent election,โ€ Oct. 13

After reading Amanda Steinerโ€™s opinion piece, I came away a little angry, a little amused and a lot confused.

Full disclosure: Steiner hyperfocuses on the โ€œincompetenceโ€ of Kitchener-Waterloo Green candidate J.D. McGuire, who happens to be my brother. But familial allegiances aside, I found this column riddled with out-of-context quotations and just plain incorrect facts โ€” such as the fact that the Green party received 2.94 per cent of the province-wide popular vote, not 3.9 per cent as
Steiner suggests.

She also suggests McGuire is knowledge-lacking when he said, โ€œIโ€™m not afraid to admit I donโ€™t know something.โ€ Would you rather a candidate that makes snap decisions with no research or no constituency feedback, Ms. Steiner?
And she suggests McGuire is ill-prepared when, noting that the Greens had no specific policy on bullying, he said heโ€™d โ€œdefinitely support any legislation that made sense.โ€ How is that a bad thing, Ms. Steiner? Would you rather a candidate that opposes sensible legislation just because it isnโ€™t steeped in the partyโ€™s platform?

Steiner uses her โ€œweak Green candidatesโ€ angle (explored for exactly 3 paragraphs in 850 meandering words) behind a thinly-veiled dislike for McGuire. If she wanted to illustrate that angle, perhaps more research was in order โ€” McGuire finished a respectable 46th out of 107 Green candidates in percentage of votes, and he received more total votes than any other quad-cities Green candidate.

But that was never your point, was it, Ms. Steiner? Actually, other than disliking my brother, what was your point?


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