Wanda Fuca: Of Votes and Potatoes

by Wanda Fuca

Election season is here, and just like clockwork, so is the best entertainment. If campaigns were awarded Emmys, ours would go to candidate for State Senate Connie Beauvais (R), who circulated this note to prospective voters in late June.

Orca-Straiters who tend to keep their eyes peeled noticed, and the comments flew:

Person 1: “What’s she trying to do, worm her way into voters’ stomachs and pockets?”

Person 2: “I guess when it comes to buying votes she is not a hesi-tater.”

Person 3: “What I wonder is: Where do them taters come from, anyhoo? Does she grow them in her own back yard or are they trucked in from east of the mountains? We aren’t getting any taters yet from our local CSA.”

Person 4: “They were trucked in from the east. Meaning she had to buy them.”

Person 2: “She is obviously trying to answer the question, ‘Tuber, or not tuber.’”

Person 5. “Kinda cheesy if you ask me. Trying to buy the silence of the yams in an election, that’s half-baked.”

As of July 26, the Beauvais campaign was lobbing veggies at her opponent, incumbent Senator Kevin van de Wege. One hundred thousand pounds of potatoes, to be exact! Take that, Senator! A campaign flyer spelled it out:

Unfortunately, a pesky federal law prohibits “Expenditures to influence voting.”  https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/597  

Now, Wanda may have more eyes than a prize 5-lb Russet, but she/he has never seen a potatoes-for-votes scheme on the Olympic Peninsula, and is wondering what’s next: Spinach for swing votes? Lettuce for lobbying? Garbanzos for gerrymandering? Perhaps in atonement for that little campaign mash-up Ms. Beauvais is planning to whip up a big batch of Freedom Fries for the whole district? Stay tuned, we may find out more at the next lame duck a l’orange dinner.

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And not related to Connie and her potatoes:

Least yeast:  Our undercover Safeway informant reports that all’s well in the supermarket aisles – despite the fact that shoppers largely ignore the one-way signs.   There are ample supplies of toilet paper and vinegar.   The meat and poultry coolers are holding up.  But today’s shortages are in the home baking areas. Bread flour is scarce and yeast is nonexistent.  These days, folks will do anything to make a little dough.

Snip Snip: Like everyone else out there, Wanda needs a haircut.  Barbers and hairdressers are back in business, but how can they maintain six-foot distancing?

Wanda had a brainstorm at the hardware store, which is selling pole trimmers, easily extendable to six feet to reach those higher branches – or hair.  The job may require a six-foot comb as well.  But Wanda does not recommend the mini-chainsaw model.

Lock Her Up!:  A while back, a local conservative commentator blamed our economic woes on “Port Townsend’s Selfish, Cruel Old People.”  A retiree himself, our critic complains that “vocal and politically influential old people in this community … want to keep businesses closed. Too many old people who wear masks when they are alone on a beach or walking in woods are pressuring government leaders to heed their outsized fears instead of making rational decisions that put on the scales the full weight of the cost and suffering of destroying our economy.”

Wanda is feeling ashamed, sort of. I don’t think Wanda is “masking” too much. She/he likes being healthy.