When it comes to politics, I'm pretty much used to taking heat from both sides.
So long as both sides are complaining, I figure I have it just about right.
This year Republicans and GOP loyalists believe we are being terribly unfair to incumbent County Councilman Dave White for reporting the attacks being made by Democrats.
Democrats insist we remain in the pocket of the Delco GOP by allowing Republicans to condemn their attacks.
But I have to admit I have never gotten a complaint quite like the one I fielded last weekend.
Once again I was taken to task, accused of playing favorites.
And once again the belief was that we were tilting to the Republicans.
But it was how we supposedly did it that fascinates me.
Last weekend we presented profiles of all the candidates seeking county office. That would be the two Democrats and two Republicans battling for two seats on County Council, as well as the row offices - Common Please Court Judge, Register of Wills, and Sheriff.
We also ran the first of two parts of listings featuring all the contested municipal, school board and magisterial district judge races that will appear on the county ballot.
We'll run the second batch of that group this coming Sunday.
But it was out profiles for the county races that drew the ire of one political insider and reader.
Actually, it wasn't anything about the profiles themselves.
But rather how we lined them up and when we presented them.
We ran the Republican candidate profiles Sunday, and followed up with the Democrats on Monday.
That is was set the reader off.
The person emailed me to suggest we set them up that way on purpose, apparently to boost the Republicans.
They indicated they were "surprised" to see the Republican candidates Sunday, with nothing about the Democratic candidates. This despite the fact we clearly noted that the Democrats would run the following day, Monday.
The reader suggested we did that on purpose because "more people read the Sunday edition than any other day."
The reader suggested that the "least read" edition is Saturday, followed by Monday, thus we did the Democrats a disservice by running their profiles on Monday.
The truth is there is not much difference anymore on our daily circulation numbers. If we had in fact run the Democrats on Saturday, I might have seen the reader's point. But not on Monday. The truth is all this information appears on our web site as well, and still does.
The reader actually suggested a novel way to fix what she considered this slight to Democrats.
"The only fair resolution is to run the Democratic profiles again this Sunday and the Republicans again on Monday."
Uh, I don't think that's going to happen.
I do appreciate your concern. But I don't agree that we were trying to stack the deck against the Dems.
Just ask Dave White.
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