By Ronald Sampson
It’s the season for candidates to have their attempts to get on the ballot fail, either as a result of ignorance, laziness, incompetence, or fate. The signature requirement deadline just came and passed, and two incumbent state legislators were amongst those that didn’t make the cut (read our coverage on that here). Most candidates offer a statement of resignation, of acknowledging that they didn’t do what they needed to, of some sort of mea culpa.
But not Tim Dickman, failed candidate for the Paradise Valley Town Council. Ohhh no, he decided to go out in a blaze of excuses and finger-pointing.
In this attempt at going out with dignity, he speaks to his side of why he withdrew his candidacy after his signatures got challenged by incumbent Councilmember Ellen Andeen. In what reads as a rather pathetic attempt at Whoa Is We martyrdom, he said, “I obtained 190 signatures, far in excess of the required 172.”
As we stated in our previous write-up when talking about Representative Melody Hernandez, anyone who knows anything about signature collection knows that a 20% buffer is essentially the bare minimum. His 10% margin was not “far in excess” of the required amount, it was half of the bare minimum recommended margin. If he was prompted to run by as many dignitaries as he suggested and they actually wanted him in office, they would have likely told him this. Either they didn’t care that much about him or he didn’t listen. This is very, very common knowledge.
And then he goes on to whine about how awful an environment is when other competitors dare to use legal means to beat their competition. What did he think this was? A potluck dinner? A bingo game? This is politics! Did he honestly think that the people whose seat he was trying to take would simply welcome him in with open arms? Signature challenges are a part of every single election cycle.
We have to assume that he is not that devastatingly naive, and instead is attempting to deflect the blame from the one person that deserves it: himself.
So Paradise Valley clearly dodged a bullet, and avoided the prospect of someone with zero personal accountability and nothing but misplaced finger-pointing as a member of leadership. Good riddance. He has lived up to what his last name has spelled out for us.