More on Candidate Stith's campaign of fear

Kevin hits a home run today, linking the Thomas Stith campaign's recent robo-call about illegal immigrants to a Right Angles blog post (Right Angles is the blog of the John Locke Foundation, one of Art Pope's conservative mouthpieces). As Kevin notes, the JLF's John Ham is not above claiming some credit for Stith subsequently raising the immigration and sanctuary city issue in Council:

(Interestingly, Ham notes in his follow-up that only hours after his post about illegal immigration went up a the JLF's Right Angles blog, the 'sanctuary city' question "became a topic of discussion among City Council members," though not noting that Councilman Stith and Ham shared, until this spring, a common source of funding for their employment.)

For the record, the common source of funding Kevin refers to is none other than Art Pope, who employed Mr. Stith as vice-president of his Civitas Institute.

More damaging to Mr. Stith than the revelation that he is prepared to carry water for Art Pope, though, is Kevin's exposure of his flip-flopping on the immigrant issue:

The second, and just as interesting, question is -- what's up with Stith coming out with automated phone calls questioning Durham's policy on illegal immigration?

After all, Stith was on the City Council that voted in the policy four years ago.
Even more eyebrow-raising: Stith not only voted in favor of the policy, he seconded the motion on the floor to do so.

From the media coverage of the Sept. 6 Council meeting, I accepted at face value Stith's mention of wanting to review the policy as typical electioneering, but not the worst example of it I could imagine. And, technically, wanting to review a decision you made four years ago is not per se a flip-flop; it's reasonable to reconsider past decisions. Anyway, it's passive campaigning, taking a stand in a meeting and living with the news coverage.

But when you start making a campaign issue out of it, marketing yourself as wanting to change the City's policy when it's a policy you voted for four years ago -- you've stepped from passive to active campaigning. And, to my mind, you've officially flopped what you once flipped.

Many of us raised eyebrows when Mr. Stith resigned his 6 figure position with Civitas in the spring. Clearly he couldn't run for mayor in Durham with Art Pope as his employer, so his resignation was widely interpreted as a signal that he was running. Now that is, though, can he dispel the notion created in the early stages of his campaign that Art Pope is its manager? And that he's willing to change his positions to suit Pope's whims?

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the comments on Kevin's blog.