Loyal reederz might recall our groundbreaking column from last issue encouraging voterz to think of elections as job interviews. Never satisfied to rest on our well-deserved laurels, we submit the following resume recently received at the palatial offices here at Adams Street Pub. Would you buy a used political office from this man?
Sins of the father’s father’s father
The document in question is written in the form of an application letter by a lawyer seeking office as a Judge in Lucas County Common Pleas Court. As to political affiliations, he assures us that his father, father’s father, and father’s father’s father were all “democratic leaders or democratic candidates.” He also refers to himself as a “long-time democrat.” The lower-case “d” is a bit odd, as is the strange way to indicate “three generations.”
Education. Candidate sez he graduated from Miami University in four years with degrees in “Finance, Economics, French and German (all with honors)”! Holy cow, those are majors across two separate colleges and in completely distinct areas. Even the two languages are from different roots. A cursory glance at the Miami website indicates that the French major requires thirty hours of French courses and German requires twenty-seven hours of German. A few of those might count as electives in the Finance major, which requires one-hundred twenty-eight total hours, but jeez o pizza, this guy must have never slept his entire undergrad career!
On to work history. The candidate indicates he started by “pushing a broom to clean the parking lot” at a store in Westgate. Wow, do they really clean acres of asphalt by hiring youngsters to sweep ‘em up? Sounds like hard work indeed. Our candidate eventually wound up in San Diego, where he reveals he “suffered a head injury.” This took quite a toll, as he admits “[o]nce considered smart, my IQ dropped below average.” That’s all right, dummies are people too.
He seems to have overcome his lack of smarts by eventually graduating from law school, establishing a law practice, and creating “two real estate management companies.” How would he serve as judge? Never fear, our candidate gets the full ramifications of the responsibilities. “I would enforce the rules and procedures of the Court,” he assures us, because “an effective judge must enforce them.” Circuitous logic aside, seems like a pretty low bar to set. Judges enforce rules. Yep.
Uh oh, this is where it gets weird. Personal statement. Folks, this is so off the wall you’d swear it was fiction, but even our feverish brains would be hard-pressed to make this stuff up. So we quote it verbatim. “I can offer a broad and diverse perspective to the judiciary. I lived as a Frenchman and even adopted a French name (Philippe LeLoup). I stood in bread lines in communist Poland and ate my tomatoes like an apple.”
Wait, there’s more. “I have seen the horrors of the Auschwitz and Dachau Concentration Camps and joined in the vow to never again permit those atrocities. I have lived in the ghetto and I have lived as a Millionaire.”
OK, enough. This has to be some sort of satirical resume foisted on an unsuspecting readership, eh?
Fruit loop
Surprise, surprise, these are actual excerpts from the letter submitted by current judicial candidate Mark A. Davis in application to then-Governor Ted Strickland for a judicial appointment in Twenty Oh Seven. It found its way into our hot little hands after last week’s column and we thought it deserved to see the light of day, since Davis has since run for judge repeatedly. And now no longer calls himself a “democrat” but is running this year as a Republican.
Those four degrees in four years that sound so unlikely? He received a reprimand from the Ohio Supreme Court for misrepresenting his education in an election and was slapped with the largest fine ever levied by that august body. The importance of enforcing rules? He was found in violation of campaign finance laws for accepting corporate checks and has recently been referred for failing to file required campaign finance forms. And those two real estate management companies? His properties have been behind in paying property taxes.
No wonder he’s never won an election. Eating tomatoes like an apple indeed.
Hopefully this is the last go-around for Candidate Davis. Perhaps he can reminisce about liberating the concentration camps and go back to those halcyon days living in France as a Frenchman.
Philippe the Loopy, y’all.
