Bob CollinsRichard Lays, a candidate for city council in Grand Forks, is apologizing for Facebook posts which included his declaration that he hates living in Grand Forks.
“That statement comes close to being disqualifying for a council candidate,” the Grand Forks Herald said in an editorial last week.
But one prerequisite ought to be that the candidate likes and respects the city. For while people who hope to reform a community seek office all the time, doesn’t even that ambition require a certain loyalty to a place?
Of all the emotions, contempt may be the most poisonous, in marriages, politics and just about everything else. And it’s contempt toward the town that he hopes to help govern that Lays seemed to express in his post.
But in a response in the same newspaper today, Lays delivers one of the greatest apologies of all time. He said he was upset that a Motley Crue concert was canceled.
I’d been looking forward to that concert for more than six months. I had third-row center tickets to my favorite band on their final tour.
To most people, that probably sounds ridiculous, but as someone who grew up in the 1980s, I know that Motley Crue always will be my favorite band.
I was furious that they had to cancel due to lack of ticket sales. I was extremely upset that we as a community could not sell out one the the greatest bands of the ’80s, when in fact I should have been upset with the promoters and marketers who were in charge of getting tickets sold.
The failure of those promoters is what I should have criticized, not the community.
Lays said he hasn’t deleted his Facebook account “because I didn’t think I had anything to hide. My friends and colleagues know me and what I stand for, and now I’d like the rest of Grand Forks to get to know me, too.”
