WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE OUTSIDERS CALL YOU...?

Whether you have one hard wired into your house or you have a cell phone, when the political races begin it will be easy for aggressive political campaigns to call on you. People who have a private and personal agenda to take over and infiltrate Liberty County.

The odds are many of our readers will get a phone call early in the 2012 election year. In fact, one group that is particularly proud that they are not from Liberty County has now publicly declared their intention to call candidates and interview them. This group is advertising to the public that they are carefully investigating many of Liberty County’s candidates as a public service to this community. They have SELF declared themselves the finder of fact and they have declared that the voter, because they have come into town and done the voters’ homework for them, will make a more informed decision. Apparently they think they need to tell the voters how to think and how to vote.

These people will probably try to lay out a seemingly logical common sense reason that their “revelations” about candidates are not mudslinging and that they have no agenda and that 'anyone that questions them does have an agenda'. But who are they? What are their names? Where do they work? How can we judge their motivations and whether they have an agenda if they are hiding in the shadows? Should candidates be concerned that if they do not consent to be interviewed by people that are not from around here that the will pay some kind of price? Should they worry that the interviews are a formality and that these people are going to try and make them look bad so they can get someone they want elected? When a candidate gets a call to come to one of their “interviews” - what do you do?

Other phone calls are being made. A great deal of work is being done by the same people to set up a political structure to support the candidates they want to be elected. These people from outside of this county have looked around the country and decided if they start Tea Parties around the county in Liberty and Dayton that they can use conservative enthusiasm to commingle and build a campaign structure that is influenced by them. To rally support they have had meetings and invited some of the more middle of the road Republicans officeholders and harshly questioned their decisions. Most of this work is being done to build trust and relationship with people who live here so they can get support for their favorite local candidates. When you get the call to attend a new Tea Party - what do you do about trusting these people from outside the county enough to allow them to convince you to vote for their local candidates?

Even more phone calls may be made. Eddie Shauberger, a former candidate for office for a decade here in Liberty County and an affiliate of these outsiders, is boasting these people have a huge treasure chest of money to spend on building Tea Parties and using other political techniques to elect the people these outsiders want elected. Shauberger, a resident of Chambers County for several years now, used phone banks in spending hundreds of thousands of contributors’ money in his past attempts to win elective office.

Shauberger had two main methods of gaining votes. One was to flood the phone lines and tell people positive things about himself. So for example, when your phone rings these people from outside the county will have a canned message aimed at convincing you that Sheriff Henry Patterson is a great sheriff. These outside people will probably follow that up with a mailer. The mailer will not mention Shauberger or that people from outside the county are spending megabucks to elect Henry Patterson. It will just try and put the idea in your head that Patterson is a good sheriff. What are you going to when they call? Why do you care what people that do not even live here say about Sheriff Patterson? Why are they spending so much money and effort on this? What will you do when they call?

Then if Shauberger stays true to past methods, these people will have prepared a “push poll” they will flood the phone lines with. The caller will try and disguise themselves as someone simply gathering information as a pollster. But in the poll there will be a very negative statement about the opponent of whoever the outsiders are supporting like Henry Patterson. For example, would you consider voting for Bobby Rader for sheriff if you knew he released some people on bond that were accused of this or that? This method is meant to be a sneaky way of putting negative mind control thoughts about a candidate in the heads of voters in a way that is not so straightforward. What are you going to do when you are cooking supper and you get this kind of phone call trying to convince you to vote for these outsider's candidate?

Statistics tell us what most voters do these days. Most voters are sick of the flood of election year “revelations” and they throw the flyers in the trash on the way back into the house. They hang the phone up early in the unsolicited call. Most people will judge these races without this kind of “help”.

These outsiders have strong ties to Sheriff Henry Patterson and they keep saying that their open records and other things they claim they worked hard to discover, are proof this candidate or that candidate is committing criminal acts. Please, someone.. anyone.. if you do stay on the phone with these people when they call in February or March, please ask them "why" the Sheriff they are almost insisting we re-elect "why doesn’t he arrest these bad people and corrupt politicians?"

What will you do when they call? We don’t know... But we do know our readers are likely to trust their own experience and what they have heard elsewhere about candidates and get back to their supper rather than visit with strangers about local politics.

Liberty Dispatch advises that no candidate talk to or meet with these outsiders even when they try to lure you in with the promise of financial support.