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So, I grit my teeth and receive such information that,
but for that source, I would not have been privy to.
That is the dilemma of a journalist. You do not always
get to pick your sources and some sources, if it was say,
close to Halloween, could be or would be called fiends or
the type of people whom, when they come close to you, you
would involuntarily check to see if your wallet was still in
your hip pocket.
I guess that is my confession of how I get some of my
leads and this following story is of that genre.
It came from a person I would call Gus. I have known
Gus for over 30 years and he is a former federal employee
who makes the rounds at the local watering holes and has a
distinct flair for summoning information from both savory
and unsavory characters.
Why Gus likes to feed me information, I do not know,
save that Gus knows that
I will pass it along with the caveat that the reader or the
voters have a right to make their own decisions about the
information and they can discard it or they can use it.
Gus asked me to meet him at Wildwood Park at our usual
“talkie bench.”
He said that he had some real juice on the strategies of the
upcoming elections and wanted me to know the drama that will
be played out against the current mayor.
As soon as I sat on the bench and waited for Gus’s
arrival, I sensed that this would be big. Big big! Why? Gus
is only late when he has got the cat’s meow in hand and he
wants me to fidget while he supremely plays his role as a
“deep throat.”
Gus arrived wearing a pulled down black fedora and a
long grey trench coat. He had on sunglasses and walked with
a limp (Gus has no limp).
I knew by his exaggerated walk, that this was big. Big big!
In his “former life,” Gus was a computer specialist for
the Coast Guard and also the Pentagon. He was drummed out
due to being a little overzealous in how he put his own
slant on clandestine e mails he would intercept from
overseas governments.
Gus sat down on the bench and surveyed the area as if he
was expecting an invasion of Marines or agents from CSI to
pop out of the trees and nab him. Nothing but silence.
I looked at Gus not knowing what to expect but always
know that when Gus is ready to talk, Gus will speak.
After a few minutes of Gus making sure that no one was
making funny movements or that the cars in the adjoining
parking lot were legit, he started in.
Gus:
It is nuts what is happening but I was able to do a little
digging and caught some orphan e mails from Carty [Finkbeiner]
to Sandy [Drabik] and from Sandy to Carty.
Me:
Orphan? What do you mean, orphan?
Gus:
In Intel, when we do a job and hack into a system, the
emails are disorganized and we have to reset them in proper
order to make sense of who said what to whom and when. So,
we use the word “orphan” to show that the emails need a home
by which to settle down in.
Me:
Gus, if what you are doing is illegal, I do not want to be
part of a hacking scheme that will land me in jail.
Gus:
(laughs out loud and takes off his yellow tinted
sunglasses). No worry, my friend. I leave no trails. I get
in and get out with the targeted cache within 20 seconds
flat.
It is like your footprint in the beach sand after the waves
comes in. Poof! Gone.
Me:
So, what is hot and what is not?
Gus:
The downtown politicos do
not like [Mayor] Paula Hicks-Hudson. They can’t control her
and she doesn’t play footsie with them and especially she
being a black woman, they don’t know how to handle her or
get any dirt on her. They went back to her college years at
Spellman and found nothing.
The emails from Carty to Sandy show that Carty is
running only to throw a wrench in the works and mess it up
for Paula. Carty knows that if he can gin up his base with a
lot of Toledo rah-rah, he will slice off enough voters from
the south side of Toledo to dilute Paula’s strength in the
north and central city wards
and parts of the west so that Paula goes down and Sandy
wins.
If Sandy wins, she promised Carty to be her chief of
staff and he can name all of the department heads and she
will fire the fire chief [Luis] Santiago.
Me:
So, what is Sandy’s take on this?
Gus:
Sandy thinks she is the brains behind Mike [Collins]. Mike
was a nice guy but not the brightest bulb in the pack and
Sandy wants to win so that when [Gov] Kasich pitches his hat
for the Republican presidential nomination, she has been
promised a boat load of goodies if she can help deliver
northwest Ohio to him. A boat load!
Me:
Boat load as in…?
Gus:
She gets a cushy cabinet position or the ambassadorship slot
to Ireland.
And for Carty, he tags along with her to Washington for a
deputy director slot in HUD. Carty can’t stand Paula because
she is on to him and she does not coddle up to him or play
his game like Jack Ford used to. Plus, when Carty called the
former fire chief, Mike Bell, King Kong, Paula called him on
the carpet for it and Carty was embarrassed by it. He never
forgave her for it.
Me:
So what is the game plan for Sandy and Carty?
Gus:
According to the emails, they are going to both attack
Paula as being too timid and weak to be a mayor but in the
last three weeks of the election, they are going to allow
only Carty to attack Paula and leave Sandy alone so Carty
can divide the vote between Paula and Carty so that Sandy
edges in, just like her late husband did.
Me:
What about the black vote and Hispanic voter?
Gus:
Not a problem. Sandy and Carty both have studied the voter
turnout in the black wards and Hispanic wards and they
notice that people of color are apathetic when it comes to
voting and they will not turn out in sufficient numbers to
offset the Southside voters.
Ergo, Sandy waltzes in and gives Kasich a good footing
in northwest Ohio. Sandy is a Republican dressed as an
independent, hoping that people will not take that into
account when they vote. She and Carty are smooth operators.
Carty will be Sandy’s political suicide bomber willing to
sacrifice himself for her for a big political payoff.
Sandy will play the role of the still grieving political
widow but the whole time she is plotting in how to get to
Washington or get that ambassadorship to Ireland.
Me:
Gus, level with me. How good is this intel?
Gus:
(putting his sunglasses back on and looking down at his
scuffed shoes). My friend, this is some of the best intel I
have ever uncovered. Be Warned…Be Wise.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at Tolliver@Juno.com
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