Stephen Flick
To the Editor:
When Terry Frank assumed the office of county mayor for Anderson County, she barely had time to sit down behind her office desk before Chuck Fritts initiated his withering and relentless assault against her. With the least provocation, Fritts has repeatedly attempted to advance his agenda as openly and as scathingly as possible against Mayor Frank. Seizing as much media attention as possible, Fritts has continued his attacks from the opening of Mayor Frank’s tenure down to the present. In response to one of the first open attacks Fritts made against her “Car Gate,” Mayor Frank candidly refuted Fritts’ charges and laid down an olive branch to him and his politicalcolleagues, asking them to lay aside the campaign mode of relating to each other. Had Mr. Fritts responded in a similar spirit, he could have saved our county much strife over the last 16-18 months.
As Fritts continued his attacks against the mayor, his political allies were emboldened to take up the standard with him. The recent February meeting of the County Commissioners is one recent example. The county watched as Myron Iwanski sought to publically embarrass and harass Mayor Frank for answers to questions that he had already received from her. Emboldened by Fritts, Iwanski has been one of Mayor Frank’s most adamant opponents. This fact was never more evident than when the county sought to display the national motto at the entrances to the courthouse. Who would ever have imagined that America would have come to a place in its national existence that the display of its motto would have evoked such vicious opposition? Mr. Iwanski fought tenaciously against this measure, calling for the secularization of any display. Far more could be and should be said about this mantra of secularization that every liberal judge pledges himself or herself to uphold, but opportunity does not lend itself to this effort on this occasion!
Other issues that have arisen during Mayor Frank’s time in office could have been resolved in a more timely manner had the mode of operation proposed by Mayor Frank’s olive branch philosophy of government been accepted by Mr. Fritts. As the county has witnessed, Mr. Fritts began immediately to erect a high fence between himself and the mayor, and now that he and his cadre of friends have rallied to his side for more than a year, he wishes to continue his embarrassing critiques and criticism of Mayor Frank. This posture of government was not her making! If Mr. Fritts, as related in The Courier News, seeks to fault the mayor for breakdown in interoffice communication, he should remember that it was he who insisted upon erecting the fence. Mr. Fritts was the one who refused to accept Mayor Frank’s olive branch philosophy of government and has brought our county to this moment of such great turmoil.
Stephen Flick
Clinton
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