Truth in advertising

A few days after the May 17 election, a defeated and groggy-sounding Vince Vicites called the WMBS talk show and put on his good-guy, I-never-go-negative schtick. Then Vicites, obviously unable or unwilling to grasp that voters had decided to give him the boot, went negative.

"I think they need to divulge to the public who they're working with," said Vicites of other candidates in the field. He then went on to imply some sort of political alliance between Democrat Al Ambrosini and Repubican Angela Zimmerlink, who each finished as the top vote-getters in their respective primaries.

Here in the patch, the only similarity we see between Ambrosini and Zimmerlink is that they each have no love for Vicites. Ambrosini was obviously trying to take a job away from Vicites and/or his running mate Vince Zapotosky. Zimmerlink has been frozen out of county decision-making by Vicites and Zapotosky, which makes any claims bu them or their supporters that all three commissioners "need to work together" dubious at best.

The old saying that, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" would certainly seem appropriate to describe any relationship between Ambrosini and Zimmerlink. And if Ambrosini is willing to say "Hello" to Zimmerlink, that's red-carpet treatment compared to the cold shoulder she's gotten from Vicites and Zapotosky.

The seed that Vicites is trying to plant, though, is that Ambrosini is somehow not a real Democrat, that the man who desposed him is -- gasp! -- willing to work with a Republican! That's funny, but wasn't it Vicites who once took a $20,000 campaign contribution from another Republican, former commissioner Joe Hardy? How does a loyal Democrat do something like that?

Still, as flawed as his premise is concerning Ambrosini and Zimmerlink, we're glad that Vicites issued a call for complete transparency. The next time he calls his buddy Mark Rafail on WMBS, we would like Vicites to offer his explanation on something that caught our eye.

While reading the Herald-Standard story "Fayette County commissioner candidates file expense reports" on May 15, we noticed that Joseph A. Bezjak of New Geneva was listed as making a $100 contribution to the Marilyn E. Cellurale for Commissioner Campaign.

Bezjak is a longtime Democrat who just happens to be the uncle of current Democrat Commissioner Vince Zapotosky. Cellurale was running as a Republican candidate for county commissioner.

Why would a close relative of Zapotosky, who was Vicites' running mate, be contributing to the campaign of a Republican seeking the same office? Wouldn't you think that Bezjak would funnel every last nickel he had to the duo who were "getting things done?"

We suspect that in addition to working to get themselves re-elected, Vicites and Zapotosky had more than a passing interest in the outcome of the Republican primary. We believe that they would have liked nothing more than to knock Zimmerlink out of the running.

The next time Vicites starts talking about who was working with whom, he should start with a full vetting of the relationship between the team that was "getting things done" and Cellurale, beginning with Bezjak's contribution to her campaign.