Poor publicity-starved Loudoun Supervisor “Ken” Reid (R-Leesburg), who has been known to trample small children and little old ladies racing across the room to buttonhole a newspaper or television reporter, has certainly been offering his sage opinions in abundance to the local media lately.
Apparently operating on the old principle that any publicity is good publicity, he has not however been wasting effort thinking about what he’s actually saying. In that respect he seems to be following in the well-trodden footsteps of fellow GOP Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling), though apparently with less calculation: Delgaudio, one senses, at least knows he is saying something outrageous and is banking on getting attention as a result.
With “Ken” it’s all much more spontaneous.
There was his memorable recent explanation to the Washington Post on why opposes Metro: that it would do nothing to alleviate traffic congestion since “more people will be driving in the future.”
And then, continuing his astonishingly unconvincing efforts to pose as an authority on Lyme Disease (“Ken” says he has done a lot of research on the subject), he gave a very authoritative interview to WTOP radio:
“We have the highest prevalence of Lyme disease in the state and the third highest number of cases in the country,” says Supervisor Ken Reid (Leesburg), who has studied the disease and is the co-author of the county’s Lyme prevention initiative.
Yes, that would be third highest number of cases in the country, just after Orange County, Suffolk County, Dutchess County, and Albany County, New York (all of which have twice as many cases per year as Loudoun); Morris County, Monmouth County, Sussex County, and Hunterdon County, New Jersey; Chester County, Pennsylvania; Montgomery County, Maryland . . .
Actually, the Board of Supervisors has grown amazingly quiet about their much vaunted Lyme Disease initiative, apparently having discovered that what they thought would be an easy feel-good meaningless bit of political theater blew up in their faces when (a) it turned out they didn’t know what they were talking about scientifically or medically (b) the crassness of their attempt to exploit the issue politically became obvious and (c) their major initiative of incorrectly and lavishly spraying thousands of gallons of dangerous pesticides over a bunch of county parks provoked far more protests than congratulations.
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Realloudoun will be off next week, returning later this month.
Hope the Loudoun Hounds won’t have started playing in the meanwhile! We’d hate to miss seeing Scott York throw out the first pitch.
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