Ric Truesdell is running for the vacant Ward 2 Las Vegas city council seat. He has nothing to recommend himself for that office, other than a lot of money he’s spending to attack conservative former state Sen. Bob Beers, who’s also running in the race.
But while Truesdell is willing to attack Beers on Twitter, in emails, in snail-mails and on TV, he has steadfastly refused to debate Beers in public. And after watching his performance last night on Jon Ralston’s Face to Face program, you can see why.
The guy’s an inarticulate cipher.
Indeed, a Beers supporter referred to him yesterday as “the male version of Shirley Breeden” – the state senator who won her seat in 2008 by hiding from her opponent and the media out of fear that saying anything out loud would expose how little she knew.
During the show, Ralston did invite Truesdell to debate Beers right there on Face to Face…but Ric chickened out, saying there wasn’t enough time – which is a load of flapdoodle. I’m fairly sure Jon would have been happy to have both men come on tonight…and I know Beers would have happily been there.
And to give you an idea of just how lame this guy is, when I called Ric out yesterday and challenged him to debate Beers one-on-one/man-to-man, he claimed he already had, citing an appearance Saturday at a meeting of Veterans in Politics. Only…
That wasn’t a debate. It was a candidate interview.
VIP members asked the individual candidates questions; it didn’t involve the candidates themselves going back and forth. Alas, Chicken Ric is such a political lost ball in the high weeds that he doesn’t even know the difference between a “Candidate Interview” and a “Candidate Debate.”
Making things worse, though, was City Councilman Steve Ross – who just survived a recall election himself – who tweeted supporting the false contention that Chicken Ric had debated Beers at the VIP meeting, claiming “I was there.”
Indeed, Ross moderated the candidate interviews, but here’s why he’s trying to claim the debate that wasn’t a debate was a debate: The same Obama Whisperer who ran Ross’ recall race, Steve Redlinger, is now running Chicken Ric’s race. So these two are joined at the hip. Go figure.
Bottom line: Chicken Ric has far outraised and outspent Bob Beers in this race and could, in fact, possibly win. But a lot of liberal, clueless people win office. Which is exactly how we got into the mess we’re in today.