I heard about the harassment and attacks on candidate-elect Joseph Chaplik when he attended the local Republican Club meeting. Unfortunately, our town guest experienced pure nasty politics.

Extremely disrespected, Chaplik wasn’t involved in the speaking order, and the club failed to draw lots for the order with all of them present as witnesses. Leadership stated the meeting was not a debate, yet they allowed negative personal blasts by Lawrence, Kavanagh and their close supporters.

The “setup” had Chaplik speak first. Then Kavanagh, speaking last, spending half his time attacking Chaplik with unverified data in defamation of good character.

Leadership allowed negatively strikes and then stopped Chaplik’s rebuttal at the end of the meeting. Nasty politics again was evident. Chaplik posted his valid rebuttal last week in the briefs and on social media. Kavanagh saw this and purposely omitted these facts with the things he pushed at the meeting.

Chaplik was highly offended that leadership allowed Kavanagh to distribute propaganda on his character with material that has never been vetted and incorrectly displayed on every table. Ignoring club bylaws? Chaplik provided material on himself to each table, as allowed, and did not distribute his opponents’ faults or press releases on their embarrassing comments.

When Chaplik tried to rebuttal the negative, inaccurate attacks on him by Kavanagh, he was harassed when he started speaking, interrupted by his opponents and then rudely stopped by leadership when he was making his point! Leadership should’ve calmed Chaplik’s opponents’ table, put order back in the meeting and allowed him to finish. This is unacceptable to allow a Fountain Hills’ guest to be treated this way, as it’s a red flag as how “the people” are treated.

Joseph Chaplik would make a great State Representative.