My initial reaction does seem unjustified. I find it hard to understand where the bar is for acceptable behavior from a public official, of any capacity. A friend of mine would like to run for school board/ city council. I've been trying to explain to him that I support him and he needs to be aware that the criteria for having a public figure castigated is not the fact of any kind if impropriety, but the appearance.
You go to war with the army you have, d00d. It's almost always petty griefing and it's always tied to the target audience. The Dixie Chicks were burned at the stake for saying "we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas" but Morgan Wallen saw a 300% spike in album sales after he got busted saying the n-word. This is small-town bitter-ass politics in a bay-area commuter community. The median home is $640k. It's a 64% white city that wasn't even incorporated until 1999. The bar is "just this side of whatever I need to get that bitch for saying mean things on Facebook" and always will be. Note that in Fresno, a mere 3-hour drive away, a member of the school board suffered no blowback for pointing a gun at someone in a fight at a school barbecue. Friend of mine watched it happen.I find it hard to understand where the bar is for acceptable behavior from a public official, of any capacity.