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Huckleberries: Mudslinger uses dirty tricks

This fall’s Coeur d’Alene City Council election officially began Tuesday at Huckleberries Online when I embedded a video hatchet job on council members Dixie Reid and Mike Kennedy. It started unofficially when an anonymous producer posted the 102-second video on Google. The video portrays Reid and Kennedy as uncaring and tone deaf to citizen input. An inaccurate depiction. In one sound-bite exchange, which is interspersed on the video with such wording as “The Inquisition,” Kennedy challenges gadfly Larry Spencer after Spencer attacks the Kroc Center at a council meeting earlier this year. “Do you have a degree in construction management?” Kennedy asks. “Do you have a degree in engineering? Do you have a degree in municipal finance?” The video then interjects that Spencer is qualified to ask questions by virtue of his status as “a taxpayer” (although he lives in the Spirit Lake area). The attack agents catch Reid during one of her notorious mini-lectures reserved for residents who annoy her. “You can’t rebut me,” sez Reid when she’s interrupted by a speaker. “I listened to you. Now, you listen to me or leave. I don’t care which.” Reid tongue-lashed Spencer and Dan Gookin of CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) when they were misbehaving in the audience this spring. She’s facing re-election this fall. Ron Edinger and Al Hassell are, too. It won’t be a cakewalk.

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