The Sun-Sentinel's Elizabeth Baier reports this morning on the scheme to recall Cooper City Commissioner John Sims and I think it stinks.
Most recall efforts are bunk. Unless they are truly based on crimes of corruption (that perhaps a certain state attorney might have ignored), I don't want to hear about them. Why? Because the people voted and a few politically motivated players with a clipboard and propaganda campaign shouldn't be allowed to undo democracy. The effort to recall Steve Gonot in Deerfield Beach, for instance, was a sham and a disgrace.
And so it is with this recall campaign in Cooper City. The grounds for recalling Sims are generally pathetic (failing to be prepared for meetings? you have to be kidding), but throwing in the charge of anti-Semitism should get the ol' kick-the-bastard-out-juices going, eh? And what is that based on? A blog that was registered to Sims that apparently depicted Cooper City Mayor Debbie Eisinger with an Adolph Hitler mustache.
First of all, that isn't anti-Semitic on its face. It is, however, American free speech. I don't think the alleged anti-Semitic comments that appeared on the blog have been published, so I'll withhold judgment on them until I see them.
It was a BSO subpoena that proved the blog was owned by Sims, who says somebody else put up the offensive stuff. BSO is saying that the blog postings constitute a hate crime, according to Baier. What utter nonsense. The fact that it's vile doesn't mean it's a crime. BSO threw the Bill of Rights out the window on this one, just as it did in Deerfield Beach when it subpoenaed Google to reveal the owner of another political blog (under the guise that it was part of a sex crimes investigation, no less). They are tying it into an incident where Mayor Debbie Eisinger's campaign manager's car was apparently vandalized with a Swastika. Now that looks like a hate crime -- but there's no evidence tying Sims to it. Why would a man running for commission (and with enough popular support to win) do such a thing? It makes no sense.
Look, the voters can decide what they think about John Sims. They don't need former commissioner Elliot Kleiman to tell them what to do. Voters already decided what to do with Kleiman -- they kicked him out of office. Now he wants to return through a back door. This isn't about anti-Semitism -- it's about anti-Simsitism. It's a move by the Eisinger-led old guard to regain power and put the dissident Sims out to the curb.
Let's hope the residents of Cooper City don't fall for it.
