How to talk to a liberal; or how not to earn the vote of an independent moderate

Jeff Hyde (R), candidate for North Carolina state senate is promoting:

[A]n interesting discussion on the working of the Liberal mind and what [sic] mainstream Americans should handle it.

It is bizarre that people determine themselves to be so alienated from others--find themselves so perplexed--that they need special instruction to communicate with people of their own culture and society--their neighbors--just because of differing viewpoints.

(I imagine a man in pith hat with smoldering pipe and binoculars staring through his window at his hybrid-driving neighbor, taking notes of careful study as he prepares an expedition into her foreign world to ask if he can borrow her rake. "Will she understand me?" "Will she attack?" "How do I talk to the liberal mind?")

That Hyde identifies with a view of a polarized landscape populated with the friendly familiar and the puzzling aliens fits with the reasons I think Hyde would be a less than adequate representative: His inclination towards the ineffective and objectionable "us-versus-them" mentality will dictate his receptiveness to constituents. His line of demarcation puts him in a very condensed landscape too.

I, an independent moderate in Hyde's district, had previously sent an email to Hyde asking him two questions about a campaign fund raising raffle he held and its secret winner:

Was the winner listed on your campaign finance report as having purchased a raffle ticket or tickets?

Was the winner related to you?

Hyde replied by ignoring my questions and asking, despite my name, Roch, appearing twice in the email, if I was some Rick Smith he knew ("Oh, yeah, I mispelled my name. Thanks for correcting that while not answering my questions."). I could only conclude that the nature of any additional response would depend on whether Hyde identified me as an us or a them.

Hyde proceeded to duck and dodge questions about his raffle and the winner even as details trickled out. The winner was Hyde's sister, of different last name. She won with one of eighteen tickets Hyde and other family members bought and put her name on. She told Jeff to keep the $5,000 prize. Hyde refused to put the financial details on his campaign finance reports for public inspection.

Hyde should have just explained what happened and put the information on his campaign finance reports. That would have been transparent and honest, traits we say we admire, if not demand, of our elected officials. Instead, he adopted a bunker mentality. That kind of behavior combined with a suspicion and sense of alienation from unfamiliar people is too small minded and frustrating for my vote.

[Full disclosure: this blogger provides web site design services to Hyde's opponent Don Vaughan for Vaughan's law practice and sold a web site domain name to Vaughan's campaign. This blogger is not involved in Vaughan's campaign in a paid or volunteer capacity.]