Nadeem Qayyum was swept into Northampton County Council in November's election. He finished fifth in the race for five at-large seats, with 45,000 votes. It was a blue wave in which every Democrat running for county office won. Though Qayyum finished fifth, he still beat the highest Republican candidate (Sam Elias) by nearly 10,000 votes. It was an outcome that few expected. But as my father told a reporter when he lost a DA's race to Charlie Spaziani, "The people have spoken. ... Fuck 'em!"
To put it mildly, I am leery of Qayyum, a Pakistani immigrant whose understanding of English has been very limited in the conversations I've had with him. Over the past two years, he's been the subject of eight incident reports from Easton police. He was investigated for possible witness intimidation when his wife, the infamous Taiba Sultana, was facing assault charges for domestic violence against her adult son. During his county campaign, he was focused on state issues like the minimum wage, which have nothing to do with county government.
He missed County Council's first Personnel Committee meeting. That's when Matt Deschler was interviewed as County Council's successor to Chris Spadoni as County Council Solicitor. Deschler was peppered with numerous questions about whether his other roles as a Bethlehem assistant solicitor or as the East Bangor Solicitor presented a potential conflict. He explained that the likelihood of such an occurrence is remote.
The very next night, when County Council was poised to vote on Deschler's appointment, Qayyum suddenly had the same questions. Because his understanding of English is clearly limited (watch the video), he read a number of questions written in advance. They all related to potential conflicts, and I'm unclear whether he understood a word in each response because he kept asking the same questions. After wasting everyone's time with questions that had been asked and answered the day before, Qayyum voted to support Deschler.
Based on my limited observations, I'd conclude that Qayyum will be a poor member of County Council. But that is no justification for the smear campaign being orchestrated against him. For weeks, I have been receiving anonymous comments claiming that Qayyum wants to use his wife as his interpreter at Council meetings. Yesterday, I received a text from someone claiming that he had heard from a third party that Qayyum had actually approached a judge for permission to use his wife in that capacity.
This rumor is completely false and is a designed smear against Qayyum. County Council President Ken Kraft told me that Qayyum has never approached him to ask to use Taiba Sultana as his interpreter. County Executive Tara Zrinski said she has not been approached, but said there are earbud translators out there. I also asked former Exec Lamont McClure, and he doesn't think Qayyum approached him. Finally, President Judge Craig Dally affirms that no judge has been approached. He adds there are co court filings about this topic.
Basically, parties unknown are running a smear campaign against Qayyum to diminish him before he has even had a chance to get his feet wet. This could be because he's Muslim or Pakistani or Taiba Sultana's husband or a Democratic Socialist. Whatever the reason, it's an ugly falsehood designed to reduce his effectiveness.
Let him screw up on his own. He needs no help from anyone. He might even surprise us.
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