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Rep. John Bennett |
A Little Bit of Corruption Just Went Down the Drain
Back in late January we had already began planning our Sequoyah County campaign after a few of our local members asked us to prepare to defend Rep. John Bennett from a Democrat challenger. We had already started discussing doing another debate like we did in 2010 and had started looking into a local school system that was said to be causing some problems for Bennett. The plans must have leaked out because around the first week of February the local chamber of commerce suddenly began inviting the two candidates to a “debate” that would be sponsored by the Sequoyah County Times, a local radio station, and the local chamber of commerce.
The Sequoyah County Times has never liked Bennett or was pressured to ignore what Bennett had been doing for the County. Cookson Hills Publishing owns several papers in the area and the Vian and Roland editions would print some of Bennett’s legislative updates but the Sequoyah County Times rarely did. Even worse was the time they cut Bennett out of a picture of a veteran’s ceremony, leaving his opponent, Tom Stites, in the picture but not even mentioning Bennett in the story. So you have a highly decorated wounded combat veteran being ignored and an Air Force Academy wash out. Depending on which story is being told, Tom Stites either had poor eyesight or motion sickness so after two years he wound up at college getting an engineering degree. Compared to Bennett’s two decades of service, including combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq it was a slap in the face to combat vets to crop Bennett out of the picture.