Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Stephen Austin pity party continues. You are running for public office, sir. People are going to vet and question you. Some will even say mean things. Put on your big boy pants and answer substantively. Stop playing the victim card, it makes you look weak. You say you are for transparency. Okay release a complete resume so voters can determine exactly what your purported financial expertise is. Given the little information
you have shared about your work history, you could be called “hedge fund guy” or “high-end developer dude” or maybe even “risky investment man” rather than your self-proclaimed “finance guy” moniker. If you don’t like being criticized for being vague ... don’t be vague.

Listen, I'm not voting for Austin but the bullying against him and his supporters is outrageous and beyond anything I've seen in the past. Those people are just plain mean. He gave his job title and company name. How is that different from the other candidates? No one else like Guan (who I'm voting for) and other candidates are going through this.

Stephen’s main problem is that his facebook page’s main activity circles around 25-30 people living vicariously through him and speaking for him. Many of the rest of the 8k people on his page are there to gawk at the crazy discourse and see if anyone they know is an active participant of that crazy train. One can clearly see a deficit in his leadership because he continuously allows them to upstage him. It is sad to see a few of Stephen’s supporters feel they have a right to speak for him just because they gave him a bunch of money to run his campaign. Do you see that happening to Jay’s campaign? Of course not, because he has leadership experience.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Stephen Austin pity party continues. You are running for public office, sir. People are going to vet and question you. Some will even say mean things. Put on your big boy pants and answer substantively. Stop playing the victim card, it makes you look weak. You say you are for transparency. Okay release a complete resume so voters can determine exactly what your purported financial expertise is. Given the little information
you have shared about your work history, you could be called “hedge fund guy” or “high-end developer dude” or maybe even “risky investment man” rather than your self-proclaimed “finance guy” moniker. If you don’t like being criticized for being vague ... don’t be vague.

Listen, I'm not voting for Austin but the bullying against him and his supporters is outrageous and beyond anything I've seen in the past. Those people are just plain mean. He gave his job title and company name. How is that different from the other candidates? No one else like Guan (who I'm voting for) and other candidates are going through this.

This isn't bullying, and I find it very odd that people are characterizing it as bullying. I'm with the top PP; this is normal stuff for a candidate running for public office. In fact, far worse things have been said about candidates running for public office. What matters is how you respond to it. Do you ignore it and run a positive campaign? Do you address it factually and then move on? Or do you bemoan all of the mean things your opponents are saying about innocent li'l you, all the while saying mean things about your opponents?

Unfortunately, he seems to have chosen the last option. I don't know if he thought that people wouldn't oppose him, or if he personally likes to think of himself as the innocent victim of his mean opponents' mean attacks, or if he thinks it's strategic to play the innocent victim, or what, and really, his motivations don't really matter anyway. Seeing what he does, is enough.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has there ever been such an ugly BOE election? The name calling, the accusations, the twitter wars, it's all disgusting.

Quoting myself to ask another question for those who know: is it normal for elected politicians to get involved in Board of Education elections and endorsed candidates?

Is it normal for elected officials to endorse candidates running for elective office on the Board of Education?

Yes, it is.

I’ve never paid attention to a board of election race like this one so I didn’t know. Thank you for answering!

Anonymous wrote:The Stephen Austin pity party continues. You are running for public office, sir. People are going to vet and question you. Some will even say mean things. Put on your big boy pants and answer substantively. Stop playing the victim card, it makes you look weak. You say you are for transparency. Okay release a complete resume so voters can determine exactly what your purported financial expertise is. Given the little information
you have shared about your work history, you could be called “hedge fund guy” or “high-end developer dude” or maybe even “risky investment man” rather than your self-proclaimed “finance guy” moniker. If you don’t like being criticized for being vague ... don’t be vague.

Listen, I'm not voting for Austin but the bullying against him and his supporters is outrageous and beyond anything I've seen in the past. Those people are just plain mean. He gave his job title and company name. How is that different from the other candidates? No one else like Guan (who I'm voting for) and other candidates are going through this.

Anonymous wrote:We need someone on the board that understands and budget and balance sheet.

The poor man and family have been harassed by the cultish mcps political establishment and some of these comments seems like there are some political trolls on here.
Are you scared that Mr Austin will call you on your shenanigans?

I care about my kids and their education. So I am voting for him.

Once again, knowing about investments is not the same as knowing about budgets.

The "poor" man and his cult followers have also said some pretty ugly things about BOE members ever since boundary analysis started.

A member of the BOE has to care about ALL kids' education, not just his own. He has not demonstrated that he cares about education since he's never volunteered in education.

No one is scared of Austin. People see through his shenanigans and his "neighborhood school" BS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has there ever been such an ugly BOE election? The name calling, the accusations, the twitter wars, it's all disgusting.

Quoting myself to ask another question for those who know: is it normal for elected politicians to get involved in Board of Education elections and endorsed candidates?

Is it normal for elected officials to endorse candidates running for elective office on the Board of Education?

Yes, it is.

Anonymous wrote:Has there ever been such an ugly BOE election? The name calling, the accusations, the twitter wars, it's all disgusting.

Quoting myself to ask another question for those who know: is it normal for elected politicians to get involved in Board of Education elections and endorsed candidates?

The Stephen Austin pity party continues. You are running for public office, sir. People are going to vet and question you. Some will even say mean things. Put on your big boy pants and answer substantively. Stop playing the victim card, it makes you look weak. You say you are for transparency. Okay release a complete resume so voters can determine exactly what your purported financial expertise is. Given the little information
you have shared about your work history, you could be called “hedge fund guy” or “high-end developer dude” or maybe even “risky investment man” rather than your self-proclaimed “finance guy” moniker. If you don’t like being criticized for being vague ... don’t be vague.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has there ever been such an ugly BOE election? The name calling, the accusations, the twitter wars, it's all disgusting.

Agreed. It's not usually like this. That suggests to me people are not happy about what the BOE is doing. In most years, there's not a peep about the BOE election and you hear much more about the other races.

Some people are very unhappy. I doubt most people are. The people who are unhappy, however, are overwhelmingly the kind of entitled, privileged people who expect to get their way no matter what and so they're very vocal. If the BOE election is ugly, it's on Austin and his contingent of bullies and Karens who show up at meetings to scream at schoolchildren. Calling out that behavior isn't "ugly," though.

Oh there has been PLENTY of ugly behavior on the part of OneMontgomery. You just want to justify it.

This. Go to the OneMontgomery Facebook page and you will see that there is no shortage of mean, bullying behavior on their part. The worst part is that a lot of people displaying this behavior are attached to MCPS. I used to follow them but no longer. It's appalling.

Anonymous wrote:We need someone on the board that understands and budget and balance sheet.

The poor man and family have been harassed by the cultish mcps political establishment and some of these comments seems like there are some political trolls on here.
Are you scared that Mr Austin will call you on your shenanigans?

I care about my kids and their education. So I am voting for him.

If the guy was truly harassed, he needs to Report to the police.

We need someone on the board that understands and budget and balance sheet.

The poor man and family have been harassed by the cultish mcps political establishment and some of these comments seems like there are some political trolls on here.
Are you scared that Mr Austin will call you on your shenanigans?

I care about my kids and their education. So I am voting for him.

Anonymous wrote:Wow, Austin supporters are belligerent and condescending.

That tells me he’s not a candidate who will work well with others.

+1 but I think that's what some people like about him, kind of like how some people like that about Trump.

Wow, Austin supporters are belligerent and condescending.

That tells me he’s not a candidate who will work well with others.

Anonymous wrote:
This is how you can tell Austin is scaring these union folks. They make up defamatory statements about him (like saying he wants overcrowded schools).

I'm sure that he doesn't *want* overcrowded schools. But without boundary changes (which he opposes), that's what we're going to get, whether he wants overcrowded schools or not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The least bad of those 2 is Dasgupta. However, there are no good candidates of the top 4 getting any press (Austin, Dasgupta, Guan, Harris). 1 is a disrupter and 3 are the status quo.

Alternatively, 1 wants to maintain the status quo, and 3 want to change it, in different ways.

Dasgupta is running as the Teacher's Union puppet. Definitely not an option for me. It doesn't matter what he says.... when you collect that union endorsement, you are in their pocket. It's just the way it works.

This! It's why I'm voting for Austin. He's definitely the candidate the union fears most.

he's also the one who wants status quo for overcrowded schools.

You are a liar. Austin doesn't want the status quo for overcrowded schools, and he's made that extremely clear. However, he doesn't want socio-economic diversity to be given priority over other factors when adjusting boundaries, because this will lead to students having to travel excessive distances to schools.

This is how you can tell Austin is scaring these union folks. They make up defamatory statements about him (like saying he wants overcrowded schools).

This is how you can tell that Austin and his supporters for status quo of boundaries are pulling the wool over your eyes. They say they don't want overcrowded, but they'd rather have overcrowded schools than looking at adjacent boundaries. They also would rather have some W cluster neighborhoods have "excessive" bus rides to their W schools than be zoned to a closer neighborhood school.