When the Green Mouse drained his double well Scotch in one gulp, I knew something was on his mind.
"I keep saying that Gahanism can't possibly get any weirder, or the Floyd County Democrats any more panic-stricken, and I keep waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, hearing Rod Serling's voice."
"What's he saying to you, Mouse?"
"It goes something like this: 'New Albany is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Gahan Zone.' "
"That's purely terrifying."
"Horrible! You know, I need a little break from Dickey World. Someone told me Saudi Arabia's great around Christmas. Wanna go check it out?"
"Nah, think not. At this point I'm paranoid about leaving the elevator on the third floor."
---
Eventually the Green Mouse settled down and passed along the latest morsel from the rumorama -- and he wasn't joking when it comes to weirdness, panic and Democrats coming undone.
The rumor goes something like this: With the Democratic Party's hold on local power having dwindled to the mayor, four council lackeys (five if you count Neville Barksdale) and the city clerk, with the 2019 municipal election cycle fast approaching, and with His Gahanic Majesty's system of fruit-basket-laden political patronage threatened with an entirely unexpected loot-by date, the party's zany elders have resolved a protocol to shift the authority for conducting local elections from the county clerk to city clerk.
I know; the idea is nutzoid, and maybe we can chalk it up to a steady diet of Rice Krispies Treats and Kool-Aid, but then again, the Democrats are donkeys on the edge. They're hanging by a thread in the normally secure urban stronghold, and the party's about to lose control of the county clerk's office, which runs elections.
On November 6, Danita Burks, a Republican, defeated Christy Eurton, the Democrat. Vicki Glotzbach (D) is city clerk; she's up for re-election in 2019, and may not even be aware of the
The state of Indiana has this to say about it:
County:
Indiana’s local government includes election administration and voter registration offices in each of the state’s 92 counties. Each county is divided into election precincts, with a total of more than 5,000 precincts in Indiana. All 92 counties have a circuit court clerk elected by the voters and a county election board, which includes the circuit court clerk, to administer local elections.
According to IC 3-5-3-1 the counties and municipalities are responsible for the payment of election expenses including “expenses of voter registration and for all election supplies, equipment and expenses out of the county treasury in the manner provided by law.”
County Clerk, County Board of Registration and County Board of Elections can be found on the Secretary of State’s website, www.sos.in.gov/elections.
The exact formula for the alchemy by which our increasingly intemperate municipal Democrats might secede from their firmly Republican state's own election rule book remains obscure.
Can anyone remember a time when city Democrats maligned the management skills of a county clerk when the latter was a Democrat?
Are Democrats implying that clerk-elect Burks is dishonest when she's yet to be sworn in?
And, if so, isn't the Political Hypocrisy Meter sounding furiously given the self-contradictory chicanery foisted by municipal Democrats on John and Jane Q. Public at every turn?
Speaking personally, this rumor is far-fetched even by New Gahanian standards. Still, the hell of it is that is sounds precisely like something the ruling elites might try to do.
