Re: โGreen party offers substandard candidates in recent election,โ Oct. 13
After reading Amanda Steinerโs opinion piece, I came away a little angry, a little amused and a lot confused.
Full disclosure: Steiner hyperfocuses on the โincompetenceโ 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, โIโm not afraid to admit I donโt 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 heโd โdefinitely 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 isnโt steeped in the partyโs platform?
Steiner uses her โweak 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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