Three Nontransparent NorCo Council Candidates

O'Donnell, Borso and Phillips

Yesterday, this blog had 6,341 visitors. I'd venture to guess that most of them are politically engaged, too, and vote in Northampton or Lehigh County. So you'd think a candidate would want his views known here. But three Northampton County Council candidates would prefer to keep you in the dark. These are Christen Borso, Tom O'Donnell and Hayden Phillips. This trio has refused to answer a questionnaire based in part on your own questions. 

Phillips told several other candidates he had no intention of responding. Borso made repeated promises that she would complete the questionnaire, but never did. O'Donnell can't even file his campaign finance report, so it appears that a questionnaire is asking too much. 

Phillips and O'Donnell can both argue that they'd never get a fair shake here because I've been critical of their candidacies. But this was their chance to prove me wrong. I gave each of the six candidates who answered a fair shake, and refused to allow any commentary at all with their answers. So the Borso, O'Donnell, Phillips refusal to answer is an insult, not to me, but to you.

In Borso's case, she broke her promise to me, given several times. 

As the campaign has worn on, Borso has struck me increasingly as a lightweight. In the primary, she latched onto Lamont McClure, who went down in flames in his bid for Executive. She praised his negative attacks. Then she latched onto O'Donnell, and the two of them started running on their own, ignoring the other Democrats in this race. Her Facebook Page is incredibly partisan, making absolutely no effort to appeal to Republican or Independent voters. She even goes so far as to instruct people only to buy only union made candy for Halloween. That's just nuts, especially from someone who has never belonged to a union.

At Monday night's debate, she spent most of the night looking down at her talking points instead of stating what she honestly feels. When asked to provide three examples of ways in which she'd economize on a County level, one of her answers was more PLAs.

"What's a PLA?" asked a student.

"Project Labor Agreement," she answered.

PLAs are a way to inject unions into construction projects. The advantage is that they ensure good wages for the workers on site. In most instances, they serve the public interest for that reason alone. But the knock on them is that they are costly.

Whether PLAs are good or bad is an argument I can save for another day. But they certainly are no way to economize costs.

Borso's answer was complete nonsense.

Like her candidacy.