Now I know.
Today, Madore would fit right in with his local right-wing political blogger buddies: cheap shots, name-calling, trying to rally his radical base.
His credibility now is approximately squadoosh. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to whamboozle us much longer.
In a political career — albeit a short one — listing numerous lowlights, Madore now has achieved a new low. And it happened at Tuesday’s council meeting.
For those of you not following along, Madore has been trying to ram through the council his vision of how a brave, new Clark County should look.
Let’s call it Madore World.
Instead of adhering to acceptable standards of growth — which concentrates development in and around urban areas — he wants to increase growth in rural areas. The problem — of course — with this concept is, services like fire, police, water, sewer, electricity don’t easily reach into the rural areas.
Professional land-use planners — like we have in our county government — get this. Madore doesn’t. So Madore invented his own growth plan — contrary to our professional planners — to open the floodgates out there.
But Madore had a problem. No one except some rural landowners bought it. It was goofy. He wasn’t quite sure how to gain traction on Madore World. He tried yakking about it on his Facebook page but, really, who cares? So he stepped up his game. He played the conspiracy card.
As one of our best reporters — Kaitlin Gillespie — put it in her story, Madore “accused county planning staff of having an ‘anti-rural growth agenda,’ of using ‘covert software’ and of manipulating records to ‘grossly inflate’ the number of developable lots in rural Clark County.”
But Community Planning Director Oliver Orjiako was having none of it. With tension and disdain in his voice, he shot back.
“Do not, sir, falsely accuse planning staff of denial or covertly presenting information.”
Think about what I said just happened. A county department head is telling off a county councilor. Unheard of. Yet there it was.
Other staffers began to get into Madore’s face, as well. They had had it with Madore’s nonsense. But it was County Council Chair Marc Boldt who finished Madore off. And he did it softly.
He did it with tears.
Boldt, you see, is a super nice guy. He’s soft-spoken and kind. A gentle man. He’s also a supporter of county workers. Boldt is not your slick politician who tries to manipulate you or take advantage of you by citing “Robert’s Rules of Order.”
Boldt is a working stiff. He’s farmed much of his life, and on occasion drives a truck to pay the bills. He closely identifies with county workers.
So when Madore tore down county workers, Boldt became emotional. With his voice breaking and his eyes welling, he spoke to Madore.
“As we move on, I would wish that we would come together and stop being so mean to each other.”
Madore, who sits next to Boldt at council meetings, is often seen looking down, writing notes when others are speaking. But as Boldt’s voice cracked, as he began crying, Madore looked up.
It would be an opportunity for Madore to reach out, to extend a hand, to agree that enough is enough.
Instead he opted for a decidedly different approach.
“The tears are not ours because somehow we’re not getting along,” Madore would declare. “The tears are for the families that are losing their property rights for their children. Now those are the appropriate tears.”
Stiff. Unemotional. Bitter.
He essentially labeled Boldt’s emotional plea, his tears, inappropriate.
It was an opportunity lost, and, I suspect, one that Madore will never recover from. Because with that piece of inhumane chatter, Madore World is crumbling.
