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Outliers Not Out-And-Out Liars; Some Are Quaint Kooks

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 10, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - The days separating us from this cycle's The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetimes have dwindled to a precious handful. Accordingly, opinions have begun to congeal as voters have grown serious.

Remarkably, a reasonable correlation - nobody's left but serious candidates - does not apply. Indeed, despite the best efforts of the August primaries to weed out crackpots, gadflies and poseurs, some, unencumbered by major party affiliations, remain.

Just like it wouldn't be Oktoberfest without lederhosen and tubas, you can't get to Election Day without cranks, impossible dreamers and borderline nut jobs, all clinging quixotically to the notion that, if only they could be heard, rigid opinions would melt like room-temperature Jell-O, eager for a new mold.

This thinking, by turns charmingly whimsical and diabolically daffy, displayed itself Tuesday night at the first of two candidates' forums this week sponsored by the West Pasco Chamber of Commerce. From the stage of the performing arts center on the west campus of Pasco-Hernando Community College, three outlier candidates argued to be taken for something besides political hairballs.

But I mean, come on.

Conventionally Repugnant

Perhaps the best that can be said for congressional hopefuls John Kalimnios and Richard Emmons, rivals for Gus Bilirakis' District 9 job, is that they aren't John Ubele.

Describing himself as an "unconventional thinker" as he seeks Republican John Legg's District 46 state House seat, the 30-year-old Ubele (YOU-bull) commits self-flattery and euphemistic assault and battery simultaneously.

Recommending the relaxation of Florida's construction codes to accommodate low-cost alternatives such as adobe houses? Justifying that position by detecting no middle ground between foreclosure and tent cities? Urging an aggressive retreat to an agrarian economy, led by a state agency stressing the joys of homegrown produce? These are the concepts of the unserious, not the unconventional.

And that's without mentioning Ubele's singular claim on novelty: his status as an unvarnished white separatist. Just sticking up for my race, he says, same as any member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP.

Ah. One more soldier in the escalating war of the grievance groups. Here, the fiery, hate-filled rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, there the icy calculations from a disciple of master-race theology.

Fear, loathing and superstition in hyphenated America. So much for e pluribus unum.

Newt Kid On The Block

In comparison, butterfly chasers Kalimnios and Emmons are earnest innocents, one-trick ponies whose moment in the arena will be little remembered and less celebrated.

Kalimnios, a retired cop from New Jersey and an independent - no liberal/conservative labels for me, thanks - claims to have discovered (on the Internet!) ready cures for the world's gluttonous energy appetite.

One involves mining operations on the moon. Let's go tomorrow! Otherwise, would you believe ... water-powered cars? Yeah, neither did Popular Mechanics.

Representing the Term Limits Party, Emmons favors revisiting the last plank of Newt Gingrich's 10-point "Contract With America," the late, great push to end careerism in Washington. Good luck with that.

Then again, given much of the contract's energetic (and fateful) dismantling during 2001-06 by the same folks who rode it to the majority in 1994, Americans might be happier today to have exchanged the other nine planks for term limits that stuck.

Seriously.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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