Should This Candidate Quit?
Does family mean more than politics?
A reader told me she was puzzled by the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press calling on Barbara Byrum, a leading Democratic candidate for secretary of state, to drop out of the race. Byrum, the clerk in Ingham County, has done a good job at that and is probably more qualified for the job than any other candidate in either party.
“Hope you can give some clarity to this,” she asked me.
So I shall.
More than a month ago, a major figure in the Michigan Democratic Party told me that they felt very bad about it, but they would no longer be able to endorse Byrum, as they had planned, and that she needed to drop out.
Not for her sake and not for the party’s sake. She needed to drop out for her son.
Four years ago, her son, then 13, was expelled from a public school after a female classmate said he put his hands in her pants. There was a lawsuit and a countersuit, and claims that Byrum and her husband attempted to use political interference, etc.
I don’t know any details beyond that. Nor do I want or need to. What I do know is that if you inject one drop of sex into any issue, everything becomes about sex.
Before Free Press editor Nancy Kaffer wrote about this, the story had been essentially unreported outside of Lansing. But if Byrum is selected at the party’s “endorsement convention” April 19, it will be talked about endlessly, and someone will reveal the boy’s name. Even if they don’t, I suspect it will do great damage to her son, who is now around 17, and possibly destroy any chance he might have at a normal life.
We don’t know, of course, whether this was a deliberate sexual assault or whether the boy was just being a little jerk. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is his future.
His parents ought to think about it, and put their child first. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist has a background that suggests he’d be a fine secretary of state, and the unwritten Democratic Party rule is that one of the nominees for the “Big Four” state jobs has to be African-American. Barb Byrum is talented, and still in her 40s.
Other opportunities are almost certain to come her way.
This is ridiculous. Let her run. Let the chips fall where they may. We have thousands of "public servants" who are currently on the taxpayer/corporate tit who are being credibly accused of far worse than mashing as children. They're still in office and doing their damnedest to destroy the Republic. Two of them are on the Supreme Court. Yes, society needs to get its head around the mortal damage that privilege (mostly White but generally economic) and Misogyny are doing to the fabric of global society. Democrats , as a party, have done inestimable damage to American society by playing it safe. The fight will be bloody but we can't better society by trying to avoid it.
OK Jack, 99% of the time I agree with you. But Jeezuz, did you ever miss the mark on this! Especially grievous that you did so at this point of time. Talk about tone deaf, you my friend need atomic powered hearing aids.
Yes Barb Bynum needs to step aside. But dammit Jack, it isn’t her SON who needs to be protected! I don’t give a rat’s ass if he was “only” 13. He allegedly sexually assaulted another student!
How about you lay your inherit misogyny aside and realize that it’s time to stop excusing men and boys for their violence against and mistreatment of women and girls?
Yeah, I’m pissed and righteously so. My abuse began at the age of this student who was (allegedly) assaulted. I’m disappointed to discover you’re a member of the “boys will be boys” club.