{"id":30370,"date":"2018-06-18T01:24:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T01:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30370"},"modified":"2018-06-18T01:24:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T01:24:01","slug":"political-learning-curve-about-to-commence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30370","title":{"rendered":"Political learning curve about to commence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/sam-johnson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-30371\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/sam-johnson-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/sam-johnson-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/sam-johnson.jpg 580w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I met a most interesting gentleman this morning, someone who almost immediately after extending his hand to greet my wife and me invited me to come to Fairview&#8217;s town hall to familiarize myself with the community&#8217;s political climate.<\/p>\n<p>This fellow is a member of the Fairview Town Council. I am reluctant to give you his name, as he doesn&#8217;t know I&#8217;m writing about him. Maybe I&#8217;ll divulge it later.<\/p>\n<p>Our relocation has been pretty smooth and seamless as we have settled in this community tucked between Allen and McKinney in Collin County. My wife and I are registered to vote now in our new community of residence, which removes any chance for us to vote in Randall County, where we lived for 23-plus years.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to vote in the race for 13th Congressional District. That won&#8217;t happen now. We&#8217;ll get to vote for a new representative in the 3rd Congressional District, which has been represented since 1991 by U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson (pictured), a former Vietnam prisoner of war. Johnson is retiring at the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll need to study up on the individuals seeking to succeed Rep. Johnson.<\/p>\n<p>My new friend from Fairview implied that next year&#8217;s municipal election will be a contentious affair. He didn&#8217;t go into detail; the setting of our meeting this morning made it difficult for him to spend too much time explaining what he implied.<\/p>\n<p>My career took me to Amarillo in January 1995. My job as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News required me to get acquainted <em>in a hurry<\/em> with the political lay of the land, just as it had required the same of me in Beaumont, when we moved to the Gulf Coast in the spring of 1984.<\/p>\n<p>I have no job requirements these days. However, my instinctive nosiness &#8212; which was bred and nurtured by nearly four decades in print journalism &#8212; compels me to sniff around at Fairview&#8217;s Town Hall.<\/p>\n<p>So, I believe I will seek to satisfy my nosy nature by continuing this relationship with my new acquaintance.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, my retirement doesn&#8217;t render me disinterested &#8230; you know?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I met a most interesting gentleman this morning, someone who almost immediately after extending his hand to greet my wife and me invited me to come to Fairview&#8217;s town hall to familiarize myself with the community&#8217;s political climate. This fellow is a member of the Fairview Town Council. I am reluctant to give you his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30370\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Political learning curve about to commence<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[27,1063,7828,3823,7829,4668],"class_list":["post-30370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","tag-13th-congressional-district","tag-collin-county","tag-fairview-town-council","tag-randall-county","tag-sam-johnson","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30372,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370\/revisions\/30372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}