It’s not unusual to hear about some underhanded tactics during an election campaign.
Stolen lawn signs are common practice and truth often takes a back seat to bombast in a lot of the campaign literature.
But, the attacks on Burlington mayoral candidate Marianne Meed Ward may have taken the political vitriol to a new low.
Ontario municipal election 2018: City of Burlington
A flyer distributed last week comparing Meed Ward and incumbent Mayor Rick Goldring, accuses Meed Ward of being irrational, calculating and manipulative as well as possessing a poor understanding of numbers.
It goes on to suggest that she is fake, power-hungry and ambitious.
The flyer appears to be the work of a candidate vying for a city council seat and was done without Goldring’s knowledge.
The mayor’s race in Burlington has been heated and acrimonious but there is no excuse for the vile smear campaign that plays upon every negative and hateful stereotype about women who seek office in politics or business.
We saw this kind of abhorrent, misogynist attitude in the last American presidential election; we saw it this spring in the Ontario election and now this kind of gutter politics has tainted local politics.
There’s nothing wrong with a good political battle, but there should be no place for this kind of behaviour.
We can and we must be better than that.
Bill Kelly is the host of the Bill Kelly Show on Global News Radio 900 CHML
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