How campaigns are deceiving you this election

Those of us with a Winter Park address may have noticed some interesting campaign mailers and emails showing up lately from the city's mayoral candidates. As has been the case in some recent elections, they've turned ugly.

The accusations are flying about who's really from what political party (in a non-partisan election), who's for this and against that, and who's in who's pocket.

But as tends to be the case with campaign mailers, they're saying more than their face value. The debate of pro-development versus anti-development — arguably Winter Park's most contentious issue — is effectively a cipher, with clue words unlocking a far larger meaning for those who see things from a place of strong political opinions.

If a candidate or sitting commissioner ever espoused a view in favor of a new development, they're almost invariably branded as the "development" candidate, with the assumption that they'd allow anything to be built in Winter Park, no matter how monstrous.

At the other end of the spectrum is the candidate who denounces a development, or who uses the words "historic designation" without tempering the context just right. Now they're seen as the anti-development candidate, eager to stifle Winter Park's economic engine, kill Park Avenue and leave the entirety of the tax bill to the homeowners.

Despite their extreme nature, these fears can have their place. Anybody who remembers the Carlisle development, or who has seen promising mixed-use developments stopped before the starting line, knows that even one project can have a huge impact on the cityscape, sometimes at the risk of the city's character. Likewise, anybody who has watched the near-deaths of Casa Feliz and the Capen house, beacons of the city's charm, know they can be wiped off the map in a matter of weeks without proper stewardship from the City Commission.

But those extremes aren't frequent. Despite the fire and brimstone accusations we see candidates assailed with in every election, we have yet to see the city burst into flame after early March. And that record has stood for more than a century.

We tend to get very good candidates in Winter Park elections, because they come from an unusually civic-minded people. Yes the fear of a 3-2 vote that kills a house or hurts a sensible boon to the tax base is always there, and some of the city's most important votes have hinged on just one swing-vote Commissioner.

Good judgment is crucial to running the city well — the kind of judgment that's not afraid to be a middle ground rather than a "strong voice" for [name your political extreme]. Candidates need to show they can take the facts and use them to make good decisions. That starts with representing yourself well in your campaign, but without representing your opponents — who, in the end, are still fellow citizens — unfairly.

Back to those pesky mailers and emails: Their messages can be deceiving.

In the case of the Cynthia Mackinnon camp's recent mailer battering opponent Steven Leary for donations seemingly linked to a prominent Winter Park development, some of the statements — sourced from an article from the Observer — have already been corrected in the original article online, yet were still used in the mailer.

One substantial correction to the article that was left out of the Mackinnon campaign's mailer, which relieves Leary of a charge that he voted to add density to the Ravaudage project, is that the vote he participated in concurrently removed building height from another part of the project, effectively nullifying any density changes to the project.

Quotes from Ravaudage developer Dan Bellows and Steven Leary, also part of the online version of the story before the Mackinnon mailer went out, included statements from Leary that he had actively avoided campaign donations directly from Bellows, and from Bellows, stating that the story overstated connections between him and the LLCs in question. Voters should know that they're not getting the whole story in the Mackinnon mailer.

That said, a recent email sent out by the Leary campaign overstated the extent of the corrections to the article in question, and falsely accused the Observer of knowingly basing the story on information given to it by the Mackinnon campaign.

Newspapers cannot be everywhere in their coverage areas at once. Newspapers frequently rely on sources within the community — readers, community activists, even public officials — to send in news tips that the newspaper may not know about. The newspaper's staff then investigates, reports upon, verifies, and writes about that information to publish for the public. Many of the greatest, most impactful news stories in modern history came from initial news tips from newspaper readers like you.

Some of the preliminary information about the aforementioned story came from just such an initial tip from a reader. But contrary to the Leary campaign's claims, we did not take that tip at face value. When taking tips about political stories, it's always important to know whether that tip comes with a political motive, and to keep that in mind to help improve the balance of reporting by speaking to people of opposing views.

Knowing that the source of the tip may have been a Mackinnon supporter, we investigated its veracity, and worked hard to be as fair as possible in a politically controversial story. We did not take information from the Mackinnon campaign as the basis for the story, and we did not simply trust that the source's tip was valid.

But occasional mistakes can be made. Sometimes one of a story's potential sources cannot be reached in time for publication. Sometimes important information is unintentionally lost in an edit. And sometimes, frankly, we could have worded things more carefully. That's why, in this case, important corrections — not retractions — were made.

The Observer has strived to remain journalistically fair and politically neutral throughout its existence, for the sake of integrity, and for the good of the community as a whole. We do not publish news stories without investigating them thoughtfully and speaking with sources from multiple angles to be as fair as possible to all parties involved.

We can only hope that political campaigns will be just as fair, but it's our job to know we can't always count on it. The Observer's job is to make sure you can always count on us.