Reader disagrees with story on Ruben’s flier

Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2006

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Steve Davies, Takoma Park

The Gazette’s journalistic treatment of Ida Ruben’s flier attacking Jamie Raskin’s Democratic credentials needed editing.

The article said Ruben ‘‘questions Raskin’s support of third-party candidates,” implying that Raskin supported Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. Not true. He supported Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He did help represent Ross Perot in his attempt to be included in the 1996 presidential debates. It was a principled stand that we all should admire, and far from helping George W. Bush get into office (that election was four years later), it had no effect whatsoever on Clinton’s re-election.

Ruben’s flier alluded to, but did not mention, Nader. I don’t know if Raskin filed anything on behalf of Nader, who was not involved in the debates in 2000. (I doubt it, but you guys could check it out.) Suffice to say it’s a stretch to say that Raskin’s legal representation of Perot in 1996 helped George W. Bush ‘‘defeat” Al Gore.

But that all is besides the point, which is this: Raskin supported the principle of allowing opposition voices to be heard. As a Democrat, I support that. Ruben, however, is so frightened of losing her seat that she is willing to say that legitimate third-party candidates should be shut out of public debates.

One other point: I couldn’t disagree more with the analysis of former Gazette reporter Josh Kurtz. (It had to take some real digging to find him for a quote). The flier was ‘‘a pretty effective hit,” the article quotes Kurtz, now an editor at Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. ‘‘If you’re a voter who is just tuning in, you’re going to be, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ ”

Quite illuminating, I must say. Well, I’m not just tuning in, but my first thoughts when I got the flier were that Ruben is desperate and doesn’t know her constituency. We’re not that gullible. My next thought was, let me go to the Web and find out more about these allegations, which turned out to be constructed of whole cloth.

I know who Jamie Raskin is. He’s a guy who believes in the U.S. Constitution and is willing to defend it. I hope supporters of Ms. Ruben will think long and hard before voting for her. She does have seniority, it’s true, but she can’t serve forever. It’s time to give her a long-deserved retirement and let someone with more energy and fresh ideas represent us in the state Senate.