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I was reading Menifee 24/7 on the candidates for city offices, and I was stuck by how extraordinarily nice and civic minded they all sounded.
So very, very nice, and maybe they even are.
But to a world-weary fella’ from the outback, it wasn’t difficult to spot how closely they all follow a ritualized formula.
And once you see it, once this formula is revealed, you have all the proof you need that these are a bunch of professional politicians, checking off uniform boxes with the formula required of the prepared candidate statement.
Of course they are going to sound nice!
These are well worn steps for elected office in Menifee. Here in the form of ladder rungs, the formula seldom varies.
The first rung is typically the selection as a neighborhood group leader of some sort, check, and then a spot on a civic board as a volunteer, check, followed by PTA president, check, and check, etc., etc., (church, military, apple pie, motherhood and all things good, amen, and check!)
Eventually, the door to City Hall opens for our skillful climber with an appointment to the Planning Commission. Yes! right on track and check!
And finally, here we are for the big one: the City Council race, and that's a check, and BINGO!
Come on! Not one person other than an ambitious professional politician does all this compulsive box-checking, all in the same general order and all with the same general “moving up” thrust of obvious intent.
Most real people don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to climb onto this ladder in the first place.
They are far too busy with their lives and families to be checking off career step boxes and virtue-signaling their civic boosterism with a smiley face.
I trust my Menifee neighbors can see how Tom Fuhrman is different.
Back in 2012 when I was first elected, I didn’t need to be concerned with any boxes to check because I didn’t come into this as a career politician.
I was just a guy from the outback Menifee who saw that mistakes in judgement and fact were already starting to drag our new city down.
A grand, fresh opportunity, but already one could detect the taint of corrupted vision that would follow.
I was offended.
I didn't have any of the right boxes checked, but I stepped into the situation with a different view of things.
From the beginning I wanted a different tone for development, I wanted more respect and consideration for what and who were already here.
And I wanted to fix specifics I saw as necessary and valuable for our new enterprise of cityhood.
I had no intention of staying any longer than needed, and I certainly wouldn’t be making a career of it.
But as we now know, my intention and my course of action didn’t work out well at all.
I had made it onto the council okay, surprising everybody by easily beating out the incumbent, Scott Mann, who was the well-financed developers’ point man with the city.
I knew that I was odd-man-out with most of that bunch, but I didn’t care.
Once on the dais I am proud to say I was a persistent irritation to the Chamber of Commerce types who reportedly saw me as stirring up dissatisfaction with all this talk about the needs and expectations of my people in southwest Menifee.
I was a stubborn voice for my people and my district, and this put me square in the sites of that pro-development crowd running the council and the city.
I had dared to complicate their schemes.
Their fix for the "Fuhrman problem" was to take me down.
And they took me down hard, expecting that would shut me up.
They obviously didn’t know Tom Fuhrman.
Now I'm coming for them and I'm calling for a posse. I wasn't finished with our work down there.
I want my old job back.
And, with what I know now, I won't need to be checking any damn boxes!
Tom, from Outback in Menifee
Coming up: Mayor Scott Mann, City Attorney Julie Biggs, and City Manager Rob Johnson – about their conspiracy and failed "assassination" attempt and why the city is still paying for it.
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