Of all the local political figures to make an unlikely impact in the waning days of the municipal election, I never would have guessed it would be Michael Sona.
Sona remains the one and only person convicted of wrongdoing in the 2011 Robocall scandal. Once a promising young Conservative political operative, Sona became a convenient scapegoat after he was identified as a potential “Pierre Poutine” in a Sun News report, and boy was he sheered.
Out of jail, and out of politics, at least professionally, Sona commented in a tweet on a GuelphToday.com article written by Tony Saxon, “The dark side of Guelph’s election campaign trail.”
Sona tweeted “Former #Guelph mayor Karen Farbridge complains abt ‘character assassination’ & ‘fake news.’ Really?!”
“There were vile comments ... but also ‘fake news’ about what you said, what you did and who you were with the goal to to assassinate your character to as wide an audience as possible,” Farbridge said in the article.
Sona took exception saying, “She ran anon smear ads w/o her name attached to them in last elxn, lied about them being from her, & owned up to it once caught. ‘Character’? Yeah right.”
Here, Sona is referencing an ad in the Guelph Tribune in 2014 that contained a picture of Sona in conversation with then Councillor Cam Guthrie at the sidelines of presumably some Conservative event. The copy read, “A person is known by the company they keep.”
Even some Farbridge supporters were aghast at the swipe.
Still, Sona’s return to the local political discourse electrified local politicos who still feel five years later that Sona hasn’t suffered enough.
“I always find it entertaining to learn I apparently still live rent-free in some people's heads,” Sona tweeted later. He’s not wrong.
Let us clear the deck of this apparent controversy by stating a few obvious facts.
Sona did his time.
Yes, there’s still a lot of known unknowns about the Robocall scandal, but even the judge that convicted him seemed to think that Sona was a patsy.
And given all that, he’s a private citizen with a right to speak his mind on politics as he sees fit.
You know what? That’s a right we all have too.
The “How dare you!” reaction to Sona’s comments buried the main point of his tweet, and of the article he was commenting on, things have gone too far into the negative, and it seems there’s no one on the political spectrum that’s not guilty.
In so much as we all may be shocked to learn how local candidates are treated, it’s also shocking to hear how candidate’s families are treated.
A social media post by Mayor Cam Guthrie’s wife Rachel added an addendum to the GuelphToday.com article saying that she and her children have been on the receiving end of cyber bullying.
“[O]ne morning our family awoke to a flurry of messages and alerts about photoshopped pornographic photos using my face along with that of our 15-year-old son,” Mrs. Guthrie wrote.
Really? Is that what we’ve come down to?
That’s rhetorical of course, but what’s worse is that instead of bringing us together, this insight from the mayor’s wife sent people back to their corners.
Some on social accused GuelphToday.com of bias instead of asking the more obvious question: Why would anyone on any staff at any publication think to ask the family members of candidates about the sexually explicit harassment *they’ve* received?
If you have the answer to that question, you’re smarter than I am, because I can’t believe the question has to be asked.
And by the way, I’ve found that people in this election have literally been using the word “bias” the same way that teenagers now use the word “literally.” They’re so obsessed with bias, they’re seeing it in their soup.
“There are a lot of carrots in my soup, the chef is clearly biased against peas!”
Enough.
There’s been a disappointing ugliness to the entire election whether it’s the harassment of candidates online or in-person, or phrasing complex issues with an “us versus them” simplicity that demeans any spirit of co-operation that we need to overcome the challenges we face.
No matter who’s elected on Monday, we’ll have to start working together on Tuesday, and for the next four years after that.
You want to voice your objection? Use the ballot box, but do so knowing that save for exceptional circumstances, like corruption or fraud, the next mayor and council are duly elected representatives of their ward, and of their city. And that includes you.
Last municipal election night, I unfollowed on Twitter someone that I considered an acquaintance because of his petulant crowing about the election results like his team won the Super Bowl.
“[T]he left movement has died in #Guelph Mayor Guthrie won with a Majority!”
That’s certainly news to all the people that still complain about the “Farbridge 7”, and to Guthrie himself who’s campaigned partially on the idea that he *didn’t* have a majority.
Long story short, unless we make a conscious effort to change things, we’ll look back at 2018 from 2022 as a more civilized time.
