Editorial: The Contradictions Between Impression & Reality Of A Candidate

Professor Lisa Marie Coppoletta | Guest Commentary

The Time is Now! The video political advertisement released by Hays County commissioner candidate Lisa Prewitt is misleading on many levels.

The glaring performative contradictions of her leadership style and decisions as a small business owner are troubling.

Prewitt is a highly polished politician giving the viewer an appearance she is homespun, authentic, and just like you.

It’s easy to formulate this impression. However, just like film sets are a complete fabrication of reality, so can people be. 

At one time, Prewitt may have been a hometown girl, a local activist. It is not hard to miss the artificially flavored popcorn she served up to the public, with each year in office, the taste becoming more rancid.

She dishes out an image of authenticity when, in reality, she was doing the Vogue dance up at the dais. Her hands and facial expressions change depending upon the audience.

However, actions are more accurate touchstones to evaluate ethical behavior than pose strikes.

Humble beginnings have taken a turn to arrogance as she climbs up the political food chain. With her sights on a county office, she will groom new candidates for municipal office.

Let’s face it; anyone who is power-hungry wants total control. All of her handpicked municipal candidates each year have never stepped foot in the city council chambers to speak at citizen comments nor a public hearing.

Prewitt’s chosen line up has never been involved in the land development code, nor attended a flood recovery meeting.

Manipulation by the larger fish in the candidate pool is easy when guppies are thrust into the political arena without their bearings straight swimming upstream. She serves as the gilding compass for these individuals. 

By the second term, the well-researched citizenry had our perceptions confirmed. Prewitt Redux: translated as shifting her cornerstone issues, aspirations for county governance, and new associates, which are contradictory to her previous cherished values.

Essentially, she charted a new course. The voting population almost needs a theodolite to telescope in and out to keep track of her ever-shifting axis of manifestos.

As a reluctant authority, I take some blame, campaigning vigorously for her twice when she ran for San Marcos City Council.

The idiom “Dance with the one who brings you to the dance” certainly holds true for she who has become skilled at the tap dance number like the attorney in Chicago while cross-examining the guilty witness.

Except in the case of Chicago, the attorney is the good guy searching for the truth. Prewitt will appear to be the belle of the ball as a Cinderella.

Instead, she is behind the curtain pulling the levers, often preying on fear appeal. She is the county candidate puppeteering local municipal races. City races have always been non-partisan. 

Her razzle-dazzle is taking hold. Her associates on social media, who never attend city council meetings unless it is grounded in ultra left-wing ideology, have plenty of time after all. 

It takes work to actually pull and pour over an actual agenda packet. Who needs to focus on the basics like drainage, taxes, and water bill rates when you can find a pet issue and whoop the public up into a frenzy with a fear appeal on Facebook.

Why study the issues when all you have to do is pull someone’s political party and make an issue on Facebook and deploy baseless fear tactics?

I did not realize that being a Republican was suddenly a thought crime. Moreover, it seems Honest Abe would have been trashed on social media if he were running for a city council race in San Marcos in the postmodern era. 

Prewitt’s hands are not dirty from working the land; they are dirty by virtue of who she associates with the exemplar case study being County Judge Ruben Becerra.

Moreover, her baseline premise of protecting neighborhood integrity was replaced by Smart Growth ideology.