Today, I was conscripted as an observer to a debate between delegates endorsing Parley Hellewell and Margaret Dayton…in my inbox!

This morning when I awoke, I discovered the following email in my inbox:

Subject: Parley Hellewell
From: Lindy Taylor

Hello all,

My name is Lindy Taylor, and I am writing you to encourage you to please support and vote for Parley Hellewell as the State Senator for our area. (His opponents are Margaret Dayton and Jeremy Friedbaum .)

I support Parley Hellewell for three reasons:

1) He has lobbied for and passed a resolution to recognize the right to participate in religious expressions in public schools (as of February 2006). It actually passed unanimously amongst Democrats and Republicans for the state of Utah. Can you believe this? Who else has been fighting for our freedoms with this much success? This means we may actually be hearing Christmas songs again for the Christmas programs! Maybe we can even read the constitution and pre-amble where it mentions Divine Providence! Maybe we can even sing our patriotic songs in our schools that mention God! I don’t know about you, but this is absolutely one of the most important privileges that we must defend and fight for, or soon we will not lose just our right to have it in public schools, but on all public property. We will soon be eliminating God from everything public altogether.

There may be those that are not as concerned about being taking back these freedoms. My husband, Paul Taylor, wrote a letter awhile back, of which this is a segment:

“Sure, we have 16 hours a day to teach our children religion, and that’s enough for me; I’m not asking that religion be taught in public school. But what message will our children glean from the fact that religious faith disappears in their public life, that none of their teachers will even acknowledge their faith? They will glean what is increasingly the truth; religious faith is not publicly acceptable, and must be hidden outside the home. Perhaps they will learn that faith and education don’t mix; perhaps, if our teachers do an exceptionally good job of hiding their faith, our children will learn that educated people don’t have faith. Is that worth fearing? … There is more to religious thought than coercing others into it; there is just plain living, without fear of reprisal for being who one is.” (emphasis added)

To me, passing this Resolution alone makes Parley a great asset to our government.

2) Parley is extremely accessible. I wrote a letter a few months ago, sending it to many representatives. I received a few responses, but his was the only personal one, even inviting me to call him and discuss the issue further. He didn’t know me from Eve! That was impressive.

3) I think Parley seeks to restore our freedoms at a pragmatic pace that will make progress possible. He is both an idealist and a realist. His record shows that he is flexible in his approach without being wishy washy in his principles. He is capable of making wise decisions, and has shown already he is able to gather support for his ideas.

To read the exact wording of the bill, you can go here—Resolution Recognizing Right to Participate in Religious Expressions in Public Schools. You can also read more about Parley Hellewell at his website at Parley2006.com .

I am an unpaid, not on the campaign, not on the payroll, supporter. I just believe in what he is trying to do for us.

Sincerely,
Lindy Taylor

Then at 4:06 pm I received the following email response to Mrs. Taylor:

Subject: Thoughts about Parley & Margaret
From: Greg Soter

I applaud Lindy Taylor’s involvement in the process of discussing candidates, and enjoyed her e-mail this morning. Thanks, Lindy.

The resolution (it wasn’t a bill, resolutions do nothing) that Parley Hellewell lobbied for is nothing more than a re-statement of existing law. It makes no change, has no impact except to say again what has already been expressed by law. It’s a little like a resounding comment of, “I think so, too!” The newspaper gave Parley a Buffalo Chip for wasting the legislature’s time and our schools’ money on this.

Utah’s 45-day legislative sessions are always packed with more “stuff” than the two chambers can deal with. I’m wondering if the time devoted to Parley’s resolution—given that it was nothing more than a pleasant expression of the obvious—might have been better spent on business that really deserved attention, but didn’t get it, before the session ended? (By the way, I’m a huge proponent of Utah’s brief 45-day legislative session. It’s a good way to automatically limit the “amount of damage” the legislature can do.)

Let me share my two cents worth about Margaret Dayton.

Margaret is an extremely bright, energetic and effective legislator. She has substance, and puts her focus on things that matter and will make a difference.

Just one case in point: Two years ago, Margaret was the first legislator (in the nation, not just in Utah) who seemed to see the folly in the federal government’s well-intended—but completely irrational and illegal—“No Child Left Behind” law. She undertook a one-woman fight to politely tell the federal government “No thanks to No Child.” A lot of people at first thought she was out of her mind. Margaret has now risen to the point of pretty much leading the nation in the issue; 49 other states have followed
Utah’s lead in objecting strongly to NCLB.

Do a Google search on Margaret Dayton No Child Left Behind, and you’ll get about 266,000 newspaper articles, broadcast features, etc. She is an exceptional leader and enormously effective legislator. (By the way, take a look at www.margaretdayton.com and click through some of the links. It’s most revealing.) Perhaps it’s a rough measure of substance and effectiveness to note that a Google search on Parley Hellewell will yield fewer than 1/10th the number of hits.

As do Lindy and her husband, I care passionately about prayer, Christmas hymns, and other expressions of religion. I also care about making sure the people I hire as legislators are spending their time (my money) in an effective, worthwhile manner. While Parley Hellewell was futzing around re-stating the obvious, Margaret Dayton has been quietly accomplishing things of significance.

While Parley is a very nice person, I believe Margaret is the better choice as state senator.

After work I ran over to the university for my Spanish class, and after class I check my email. Now I had an email from Mr. Taylor offered as a rebuttle to Mr. Soter’s counter endorsement:

Subject: More on Margaret and Parley
From: Paul Taylor

I’m glad to see (and now participate in) an active email discussion of the candidates for state senator. I appreciate Greg’s comments and interest in the race.

Normally I would share Greg’s low opinion of resolutions. In this case I believe a resolution was a perfect vehicle. Although religious expression in public schools is legal, in reality it is suppressed by both school policy and practice. This is a result of misunderstanding the law, and fear of lawsuits and public censure. New law wasn’t called for, and would have been a true waste of legislative effort and time. A resolution that communicates the truth to the right people stands a chance of reversing the chilling effect.

Although Margaret does not represent my house district, I have no reason to dispute Greg’s comments about her character or her convictions. I’m glad we have had both Margaret and Parley representing Utah County in the legislature.

Continuing Greg’s comparison of their legislative track records, a review of the 2006 session shows that Margaret (http://www.le.utah.gov/asp/billsintro/RepResults.asp?Listbox3=DAYTOM) introduced four bills. Two of these were defeated, one vetoed. The one that passed was… a resolution, H.C.R. 2, “Resolution Promoting Utah’s Legislators Back to School Program.”

Parley’s track record for the 2006 session (http://www.le.utah.gov/asp/billsintro/SenResults.asp?Listbox2=HELLEPG) shows, of the 15 bills he introduced, seven were signed by the governor into law, his resolution passed unanimously, five bills were defeated and two had no final action before the close of session.

I don’t intend to compare Parley and Margaret by these summaries, as they served in two different legislative bodies, and both of their contributions go far beyond the bills they introduced. I merely wish to point out that Margaret submits resolutions, too, and that Greg’s description of Parley “futzing around” doesn’t paint a complete picture of his accomplishments.

A word, as well, about Greg’s Google argument. While his search on Margaret Dayton No Child Left Behind does return the 266,000 hits he claimed, most of them have to do with other Margarets, other lefts and other children. To get a more pertinent result set, put the words that go together in quotes, like this: “Margaret Dayton” “No Child Left Behind”. This returns 776 results, most of which are about the right Margaret, which is a lot of hits for one legislator on one topic. Putting Greg’s search of Parley Hellewell in quotes, “Parley Hellewell”, returns 10,500 results. This is still comparing apples and oranges, but that’s all you get to do with Google search counts, which is why I recommend voting on other factors.

As county delegates we definitely face a difficult choice for this senate district. I’m grateful to have two proven, conservative legislators to choose from. On the basis of his principles, performance, accessibility, his position on school choice and my gratitude for his resolution, I will be supporting Parley Hellewell at the convention.

Paul Taylor
County Delegate, OR-16

I knew that when I became a delegate and I gave them my email address I would be receiving email from the candidates. I didn’t expect to be getting email from other delegates (where was I when they passed out the delegate email lists?). Not that I mind too much, it is always great to hear the differing view points. However, since they clearly have delegate email addresses and I do not, any response from me would be basically private, while theirs are broadcast to all of us. If this is a “discussion” it isn’t a fair one. So I sent the following response/proposal to Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and to Mr. Soter:

Subject: Re: More on Margaret and Parley
From: J. Max Wilson

Dear Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Taylor, and Mr. Soter,

While I have found both of your endorsements very interesting and helpful, I feel that this is hardly a fair situation when both of you appear have access to a good number of delegate email addresses, while I, lamentably, only have access to your individual emails. In other words, you have the power to broadcast your thoughts to apparently all of us, while we can only respond to each of you in private, as it were. That’s hardly a fair “discussion.” And while I am very interested in following your continued repartee, I’m not sure everyone else wants to be involuntarily subject to your debate in their email inboxes.

So here is my proposal, I will post the text of both of your emails on my blog (http://www.sixteensmallstones.org ) and I will temporarily change my blog comment settings to be a little less restrictive so that comments don’t have to be approved before appearing. At that point you, with your delegate email lists that I am not privy to, can each send out one more email to the rest of us, forwarding a copy of this response and inviting any of the delegates who might be interested to continue the discussion in the comments of my blog post.

I think that my proposal demonstrates common courtesy to the delegates while at the same time providing an easy way for everyone to participate equally and in one common public location.

I plan to post the text of your emails, as well as this reply, on my blog in any case. Perhaps it will be picked up by UtahPolicy.com, as were a couple of my posts last week. I hope you accept my proposal.

Jonathan Max Wilson
County Delegate – OR30
http://www.sixteensmallstones.org

Perhaps we can successfully move this conversation (Spam Debate?) out of our inboxes, where only those privileged to have email lists reign, to here where everyone can have a real discussion.