It is the very nature of politics that shorthand serve as a substitute much or most of the time for substance, and abbreviation intercede in place of thought. It is also a common belief at this point that we have reached another appalling stage of devolution in our public life, wherein we boil complexity down to the worst, most gnarly images meant to convey nothing but pure and hateful harm to our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings.

It’s unfair that any person be reduced to caricature, but so it is is that cruel politics, our societal firewall against war, protects us, even in its most devious and dastardly and one-claw-up-from-our-distant-reptilian-relatives, state. And yet, I feel in this case that those purveyors of a mail piece attacking Donnetta Johnson crossed over into another sphere, and fell prey to what the candidate herself identified as truly the subterranean version of communication (forget about rhetoric!), otherwise known as the base-craven, quasi-literacy of President Donald J. Trump. In this vile space masquerading as political discourse,  vicious associations – regardless of the truth – try to encapsulate supposedly fearsome qualities.

I find it personally grievously offensive that a woman whose life’s work is to help children find their inner artists and inner voices and speak and sing and act with the honest purpose of youth should be confined by those associated with her opposition to the harsh world of Trump-reductionist dog whistling.

Successful businesswoman Donnetta Johnson, as most people with children in this area know, runs a  splendid school that specializes in arming young people with the courage and confidence to create. Her professionals impart their expertise under the auspices of a uniquely humane director. For Ms. Donetta – as the children call her – knows something about the subject of childhood depression. She lost a child, the pain of which I can’t begin to fathom, and instead of giving in, she devotes herself to helping the rest of us with children desperate for help in a world whose suburban delineations are often amorphous and undefined and, yes, sometimes frightening.

This outrageous attempt to brand Ms. Donnetta as a puppet of the anti-police movement could be written off as merely the exercise of tough knuckle politics and nothing to worry about, but precisely because the suburbs are too often vague in terms of projecting a cultural context and, in fact, a cultural reference point, we must strenuously object. This is an election at the national level where both sides are fighting not only for the soul of the country but for the soul of the suburbs, in fact, as President Trump – himself the living egregious emblem of hateful misogyny and racist division – wants “suburban women” to vote for him.

In this case, the town of Hillsborough has an opportunity to not only reject the sniveling entreaty of the president, but of those forces that would glob onto the same coloring book of shame, and to reward a candidate for office who has helped transform her town from a rather ordinary – on the surface, and if one were merely observing its physical layout – Central Jersey town with no town center into an exciting and youth-alive oasis of the arts.

Both parties have engaged in race-baiting. We saw the Democrats shamefully engage in it last year as they tried to stop Antwan McClellan of Ocean City, who has emerged at the Statehouse as one of New Jersey’s leading young stars. These suggestions and cut and paste intimations and negative associations in place of a real agenda and a real positive and authoritative leadership voice invariably fail.

If Donnetta Johnson doesn’t win on Nov. 3rd, she has already educated an army of civilized and galvanized young women, and young men, who will never allow the cowardly vagaries of political vagueness to define who they are; and they will ultimately overwhelm those fearful forces who can only project awful and untruthful images because they cannot summon their own inner might. But given her record as a leader in her community, a suburban Central Jersey woman who infuses Hillsborough with infectious brilliance and lifts children up onto the true stage of humanity, she deserves a seat on the township committee, to bring to the public square, and to the public governance of her town, the same creative energies she pours into her extraordinary private work, and to shovel Hillsborough out of whatever hateful residue has ensued in this unfortunate era of the president and his apologists.

In the face of a crippled Trump-derivative message, the people of Hillsborough have the chance of a lifetime with a vote for suburban business owner Donnetta Johnson. If you fault me for being somewhat emotionally involved and for taking a rare step of endorsing someone (although, we did back Joe Biden, too), you would be right, I suppose., it is emotional in this case and it is personal. Elections are at the local level. They’re personal and human and real. I know Ms. Donnetta and I know her work. I value work, especially in these times where too much activity that isn’t productive goes rewarded while people who actually build find themselves saddled by a government that punishes instead of helps. I know the son Ms. Donnetta raised too, an exemplary individual in his own right, and it is no exaggeration to say they have helped someone close to me, as close as it can get, in fact, but “help” doesn’t even begin to convey the depth of their effort; and broad strokes of hate can never blot out the joyful masterpieces among us, taught and guided by a first rate intellect and genuine protector of children.

Vote for Hillsborough, New Jersey. Vote for Ms. Donnetta Johnson.