Ray Fulmer, I owe you an apology. I have written more than once that you were not particularly energetic or creative while serving as president of borough council. That your lack of vision was the reason you so badly lost the election. That you blamed the voters for not being able to find your name on the ballot.
But I was wrong. Recently, you have shown that you can be very creative, while admitting that lack of voter sophistication is not the villain here.
You originally asked us to believe that citizens were so confused by the four candidates on the ballot that they just could not locate you, a 10-year council veteran, a man who has called Quakertown home for much of his life.
You claimed to be shocked by the outcome. You said you expected to finish first, not last. The day after the election, you told The Morning Call "I'm still trying to figure out how it happened". You had spent ten years groping for answers in your town, and one more day groping for answers about the poll results.
But, given a month for reflection and introspection, it now appears that you had an epiphany. In your farewell speech to council, you offered a whole new explanation for your defeat. It wasn't the voters, it was the media!
You said, "It has not been easy. I have taken, excuse the expression, one hell of a beating over the last couple years from a sleazy columnist, from a newspaper that sold its soul down the road and is now just a shell of what it once was, a rotting carcass".
Sound familiar, everyone? President Bush is busy blaming The New York Times for blowing the whistle on his illegal domestic spying. Secretary of State Rumsfeld attacks the media for reporting only the bad news about Iraq. Fernando Ferrer blamed "a biased news media and blundering pollsters" for his defeat by Michael Bloomberg in the New York mayoral race. Richard Nixon proclaimed that reporters wouldn't have him to "kick around anymore".
Scapegoating the media is nothing new. People caught in the act often fault the press for their downfall - as if reporting shenanigans is worse than committing them. Remember Spiro Agnew's "naddering nabobs of negativism"? Priests caught with their hands in the cookie jar - or elsewhere. Philadelphia Mayor John Street. Enron's Kenneth Lay. O.J., T.O. Gary Condit. Jimmy Swaggart.
In April, General Motors canceled its advertising in the Los Angeles Times, apparently because an auto columnist called for GM's top management to be "impeached". GM's earnings will be about 80% lower than expected. But they knew who to blame - the media, of course.
Back in council, Fulmer also added " I wish David Zaiser well. If I did not wish David Zaiser well, I would be saying something negative about the community. I want him to succeed and I'm sure he will."
But, Ray, despite your misleading public posturing about the importance of wishing Zaiser well, you have yet to speak to him personally.
And there is more. After the council meeting, your wife, Betty, showed her holiday spirit by accosting a young female Free Press freelance writer, who she had never before met, with the howdy-do, "Your paper - it's (expletive deleted). I wanted you to know that it's (expletive deleted). Your paper is (expletive deleted). You work there, so you should know it. It's (expletive deleted)."
Frankly, the citizens of Quakertown deserved better from you. Your farewell would have been an excellent time to show some remorse over those hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of no-bid contracts you handed out. Or to apologize for ignoring the town's infrastructure until things got so bad that today's taxpayers are being socked with huge bills.
Or to tell everyone how the borough missed it's opportunity to have much-needed age-restricted housing because you refused to cooperate with Richland on the Krupp site. Or to explain why your town is virtually the only one in the county with no historic preservation ordinance in place.
Or to clarify your role in Qtown overcharging Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority by more than $2,000,000. Or to apologize for allowing former police chief Jim McFadden to keep the borough twenty years behind the times. Or to explain how the pool went over budget by $800,000.
Or how Dave Woglom was allowed to avoid state law in buying his expensive borough car. Or how Dan Williams got his special-council-price stone delivery. Or how Lynn Kraft received sweet contracts without budgets.
Ray, you are leaving council, but those rotting carcasses of borough issues still stink. Borough issues revealed by journalists who you repeatedly branded as "outsiders", and tried vainly to discredit. Just like Nixon, Bush, Agnew, Lay, and O.J. did.
At the recent annual awards lunch of the Upper Bucks Chamber of Commerce, councilman Dave Wilsey was being honored for his hard work on the Sesqui. But you embarrassingly used your speech introducing him to blame "a local newspaper" for not giving you proper credit for preserving town history. So on behalf of The Free Press, I again apologize. Ray - you are history.
And, this history we will remember, lest we be doomed to repeat it. We will remember the mess you left us as president. And the bitter, classless way you went out, blaming everyone else. On both counts, Quakertown deserved better.
The election results reflect the people's faith in their soulless hometown paper. You see it now, just a little too late. Your epiphany is your epitaph.