Dependency

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David Canepa, candidate for the U.S. Congress, is never shy about expressing his feelings and his outrage. His latest target was a Kevin Mullin mailer paid for by a major Democratic Party PAC. Canepa blamed this PAC for trying to defeat Nina Turner, an anti-Biden progressive and Bernie Sanders supporter who is a candidate for Congress in the Democratic primary in Ohio. Canepa is now (or maybe has always been) a progressive Democrat. I don’t know how that plays in this race. So far he hasn’t attacked his other opponent, Emily Beach, for being supported by Vote Mama, a political PAC supporting Democratic women running for Congress.

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Three cheers and more for Canepa, San Mateo County rep on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Gina Papan, Millbrae councilmember, San Mateo cities rep on MTC, for making Caltrain electrification a high priority for federal funds. MTC is the regional agency which dispenses federal transportation dollars in the Bay Area. Papan is chair of its Allocations Committee.

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Former San Mateo Union High School District superintendent, Austin Sellery, passed away in September. He was 98. He served in World War II and was a German prisoner of war before hostilities ceased. His wife J’nan Sellery, who predeceased him, was an English professor at Claremont College, the first female head of a department there. I joined the high school board in 1993, Sellery’s last year before retirement. He was also an avid tennis player and a state senior doubles champion. He played tennis daily through his ’80s. His secret — a morning 20-minute exercise routine.

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The following headline enticed me to read the entire op-ed in the March 18 issue of the New York Times: “It’s Possible to Learn from Flawed People.” While the article was about Thomas More, hero of the best-selling novel — “Wolf’s Head,” the enabler of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, and someone who tried to stop the Protestant Reformation, Margaret Renkl writes it’s more complicated than that. And that brought to mind the recent movement to take down statutes, rename schools and streets.

The San Francisco School Board never considered that some of the people on their condemned list might have done some good things as well as bad. In New York City, outraged citizens demanded the removal of Teddy Roosevelt on his horse with a Native American and

African figure beside him, in front of the museum he helped found, The Museum of Natural History.

Ironically, he was the great progressive of his time, an advocate of a free press and the enabler of our National Parks. Maybe we columnists should give the elected officials and candidates for office a break and try to see their good side. At the very least they are willing to get out there and suffer the heat and attacks in a grueling campaign instead of just complaining from the safety of a living room couch.

So in this mood I want to give a shout out to the devoted critics of my column on line who express their love of Trump and displeasure with me. I especially loved the last one: “If Donald Trump is a Russian spy, then you must be Mickey Mouse.”

Sue Lempert is the former mayor of San Mateo. Her column runs every Monday. She can be reached at sue@smdailyjournal.com.