Recently, former state Rep. Perry O. Hooper wrote a column in this newspaper headlined “Vance Destroys Walz in VP Debate.” Hooper proudly declared that JD Vance “wiped the floor with Walz.” It’s easy to wipe the floor with an opponent when your own lies go unchallenged. When writing about the debate, Mr. Hooper was not above spreading misinformation, what Kellyanne Conway called “alternative facts.” Repeat a lie often enough, and people will think it’s true.
In his first case of misinformation, Mr. Hooper wrote: “Walz joined the communist regime during his time as a high school teacher.” It’s a Google-worthy fact that Tim Walz visited China several times, teaching there for a year as a young man and then taking groups of high school students to visit. But Mr. Hooper’s slur that Walz “was sociable” has been refuted by many sources. CNN quoted Jeffery Ngo, a democracy activist from Hong Kong: “Walz may be the most solid candidate on human rights and China on a major party ticket in recent history.” According to Caitlin Yilek of CBS News (10/24/2/24), “Walz has spent his political career criticizing the Chinese government, especially its human rights record.” She continued: “In 2017, Walz was the only lawmaker to co-sponsor the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was ultimately passed in 2019.” Do these easily verifiable facts about Walz make him look like someone “hooked up with the communist regime”? An often respected politician from another era and a Republican, George HW Bush, also visited and studied the Chinese. Bush “firmly believed that only by working with China can the United States realize its own full potential.” (From the George HW Bush Foundation for the USA: China Relationships.) Was Bush a communist sympathizer? Hardly.
In another false statement about Walz, Hooper wrote: “Instead of defending law and order when Minneapolis burned, he bowed to the far-left lunatics.” Vance’s own running mate reportedly begged to differ. Then-President Donald Trump said of Minnesota Governor Walz at the time: “What they did in Minneapolis was unbelievable. . . They went in and dominated, and it happened immediately. In a phone call a week after George Floyd’s death, Trump told Walz he was an “excellent man,” and Trump later said, “I don’t blame you. I blame the mayor.”
Hooper also wrote that Walz “is the genius who thought it was a great idea to spend taxpayer money on tampon machines in boys’ bathrooms. That’s the kind of left-wing nonsense that Walz proudly stands for.” Here is the New York Times response to Hooper’s misinformation: “Conservatives have criticized Gov. Tim Walz over the law, but schools haven’t taken it as a mandate to put menstrual products in the boys’ bathroom.” Minnesota State Rep. Peggy Bennett, the top Republican on the Education Policy Committee, said, “I want menstruating students to have access to menstrual products and again, let districts decide the best way to do that.”
Mr. Hooper tried to hit close to home with this jab at Governor Walz: “No wonder even his own brother supports Trump.” Without even looking at this accusation, I can quickly name two other politicians whose family members have no intention of voting for them. Do you remember RFK, Jr. yet? His entire family rebelled against him. And let’s not forget Mary Trump, the niece of a certain former president. She wrote a comprehensive book about her uncle:Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the Most Dangerous Man in the World.
The above is certainly not all of Governor Walz’s statements and behavior that Mr. Hooper took exception to, but Hooper’s complaints are small potatoes. I came of age when the presidential election was about big things – a mission to the moon, civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the illegal actions of a president during his election campaign (Watergate, actually, not J6). A presidential election should are about big things, and our nation faces enormous challenges. The biggest challenge for many voters this November may be money, or the lack thereof. “It’s the economy, stupid,” has been a refrain since Jim Carville coined the phrase in 1992.
But people don’t always vote in their own interests or with their wallets in mind. Maybe the Republicans are just better salespeople, but somehow they have convinced many Americans that “the best party for the economy is the Republican.” Very simply: this is not true. Democrats just need better PR. I found facts about the two parties and the national economy on various internet sources, but I wanted a source whose bias was not ‘left’ or ‘right’, but ‘center’, so I use data from the Lexington Herald Leader (although all the data said the same thing). In an article published on 8/29/24, Associated Press writer Ken Miller looked at the last six administrations and found that the economy had indeed performed well in several areas of the economy — job growth, GDP, inflation and the stock market. . much better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans. In a single area, job growth, this figure averaged 13.58%, compared to 0.49% for Republican presidents. In a stunning statistic, Miller wrote, “Average job growth has been 27.71 times greater under the most recent three Democratic administrations than under the most recent three Republican administrations.”
Two more statistics to make my point: A look at the twenty poorest states as of 2023 shows that fifteen of them voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election, and fourteen of those twenty poorest states have Republican governors. And yes, Alabama fits that bill in both categories.
The numbers are compelling, but the human brain doesn’t easily let go of the things we think we know—the things we know we believe. Republicans have long said they are better for the economy, and many people accept that as gospel. However, the internet is wide open for anyone to do research. As the character Annie Savoy said in the movie Taurus Durham“You can look it up.”
There are still days until November 5th. You have time to look up many things.
Linda Fisher, a resident of Prattville, is a novelist, a retired public school teacher and the former owner of a small business, Chocodelphia.
