The following letter from Sussex Alliance for Responsible Growth was submitted to the Cape Gazette for publication.
You may have seen a political ad in the Aug. 28 Cape Gazette for I.G. Burton’s campaign for Sussex County Council. The ad included the contents of an email from SARG to Mr. Burton’s opponent, Mark Schaeffer, protesting a campaign ad distributed by Mr. Schaeffer. The content of this email is copied below.
SARG has always been strictly nonpartisan and has never, and will never, support any political candidate. Our role is to inform, educate and engage citizens on issues of high importance. People and politicians agree or disagree, and SARG encourages discussion and debate on the issues.
However, references to SARG in the content of Mr. Schaeffer’s ad were false, a misrepresentation and purposely misleading, and SARG felt the need to respond. Mr. Burton on his own chose to reproduce SARG’s response in his own political advertisement. So SARG has been dragged inadvertently and unwillingly into a political contest.
SARG did not choose to be in this position, and we want to unambiguously state that we are not taking sides in the election. SARG is not and will not endorse any candidate for any office. We only want the record to be clear that what was alleged in Mr. Schaeffer’s ad was false.
Content of Aug. 25 email sent to Mark Schaeffer
Mr. Schaeffer:
It has come to SARG’s attention that your campaign for Sussex County Council is circulating a false and deceptive campaign communication attributing statements by your primary opponent, I. G. Burton, to a recent SARG commentary regarding the draft memorandum of understanding between DelDOT and Sussex County. Those statements are fictitious, made up, do not exist and are not in the document.
The ad states that Republican in Name Only Burton plans “taking” land from farmers and large land owners and attributes that statement to the recent SARG commentary presented to Sussex County Council.
Neither Mr. Burton nor any government official contributed to the creation of the document, nor is he or any other government official quoted in the document. To our knowledge, no member of county council has commented publicly on the content. To emphasize how untrue your statement is, the word “taking” appears once in the entire document in an appendix presenting information from the American Planning Association, not SARG and certainly not Mr. Burton. Nowhere in the document is there any discussion or proposal for taking land from anyone.
The next statement is also patently false. Burton refuses to pay our farmers and large landowners for land “taken” from them with his ordinances. Again, the source supposedly is SARG’s MOU commentary. Again, no such statement is made in the document, not by Mr. Burton and certainly not by SARG.
This ad drags SARG, a nonpartisan organization, into a partisan election for county council. SARG presents information and recommendations to the public and elected and appointed government officials without bias, and does not involve itself in partisan politics. SARG welcomes responses to our positions, pro and con, and encourages dialogue on these critical issues facing Sussex County.
This ad is outrageous and dishonest in presenting phony statements and attributing them to SARG. SARG demands that this communication be retracted and that you issue a statement admitting that attributing these false statements to SARG was in error.
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