Many of you probably don't even know who Dan Spahr is. That's a symptom of his less-than-memorable campaign for Ward 4 City Council against Shirley Scott.
Once he was quite-predictably crushed at the polls, I never expected to give him another thought, unless he got it into his head to take on another kamikaze political mission in the future.
But then, driving down 1st Avenue on my way home from work, I spotted a not-yet-removed Dan Spahr bumper sticker. I hadn't seen any of these during the campaign, so for all I know, I just got lucky and had stumbled across Dan's own car.
But what stuck me was the slogan:
Support Our Troops
www.DanSpahr2007.com
Yes, the font sizes are a reasonably accurate reflection of the ratio of the font sizes on the sticker. And on his web-site you'll note the prominence of the American flag - not the Arizona flag, nor the Tucson city flag.
Just what office did Dan think he was running for? The City Council has no power to support or undermine our troops, except in a purely symbolic way. The issue is completely irrelevant to the a race for City Council.
Then I realized it: in Dan Spahr's mind, a City Council race has
everything to do with supporting the troops, because Dan Spahr is a
jingoistic idiot. And his campaign was focused on appealing to
jingoistic idiots, which might have something to do with why he lost.
Now, I will allow that perhaps some misguided jingoistic idiot supporter of Dan Spahr maybe went off the reservation and created his own asinine jingoistic bumper sticker that really had nothing to do with Dan Spahr's doomed campaign. But that doesn't seem likely.
What seems much more likely is that Dan Spahr, at a loss for anything actually relevant to politics or policy in the city of Tucson with which to define his campaign, reached immediately for the last refuge of scoundrels. Thus was born the "Support Our Troops" city council race bumper sticker.
So if you remember nothing else about Dan Spahr -- and it seems very unlikely that you would -- remember this: he's a jingoistic idiot. And that's really all you need to know.
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