If you’re going to put your name into the public arena and if you intend to present yourself as a candidate for a governing board, you’d better be prepared for extra-meticulous scrutiny.
That means you’d better be ready to have everything you put into the public domain examined with a magnifying glass.
I’m talking about what you say on social media. If you’ve said something you might regret, then it’s best you not say it.
Social media have all but eliminated potential public officeholders’ zone of privacy.
There. Now I need to mention one Sandra McCartt, who’s one of five individuals being considered for a spot on the Amarillo City Council.
It appears there might be a problem with some of the things this person has said on her Facebook account.
She seems to have said some things about others that might come back to bite her.
McCartt is vying for the chance to succeed Place 2 Councilman Brian Eades, who’s leaving office in July.
I do not know Sandra McCartt. Nor am I willing to say that these things she’s reportedly said are a deal-breaker as the City Council considers her among the other finalists who are seeking to join the council. She’ll need to have her answers ready when the council starts peppering her with questions about why she said these things.
According to the Amarillo Globe-News: “Facebook comments by Sandra McCartt, a professional recruiter vying for the Place 2 position on council, picked at Amarillo, referring to it as ‘Jackass Flats,’ mocked Chinese people and compared the mayor to ‘a psychotic trunk monkey.’
“McCartt refers to Millenials as a generation of ‘entitled little shits.’ In other comments, she mocks blonde women, uses a slur against Jews to label a landlord with whom she was arguing, repeatedly refers to a woman as a ‘kid’ and ‘little girl’ and discounts the participation of entire groups in the political process.”
Amazing, yes? Well, I believe it is.
I find this new council-selection process fascinating in the extreme. It marks a radical departure from what’s been done before. Previous council appointees were chosen by the council basically with little public input. The new process is designed to be more transparent.
City Councilman Mark Nair, who helped develop this new selection process, acknowledged to the newspaper that there was no “vetting” involved with selecting the finalists.
Maybe there ought to have been some vetting.
In one of her Facebook posts, she said there were things she do for $10 per City Council meeting, but that listening to “all the crap from the dear public is not one of them.”
There are some other, um, revealing statements as well.
It looks me as though the City Council has given itself a large array of traps to run if it is going to “open up” the machinery of this selection process to public review.
One place it needs to start is to ensure that the individuals it is considering for membership on the five-member panel haven’t put thoughtless or careless statements into the public domain.
Once they’re out there, it’s impossible to take them all back.