Anthony Amore

TWENTY YEARS AGO, Charles Krauthammer famously said of the divide between the right and the left that “Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” This, he claimed, was a fundamental law of America politics. While that was true in 2002, today, it seems, a more apt law would state “Both sides think the other is evil.”

The word “evil” was bandied about by some on May 21 at the Massachusetts Republican Convention in Springfield (along with a few less family-friendly terms), where I accepted my party’s nomination to be its candidate for state auditor. And while I understand that fiery overstatement is to political conventions what yelling at the umpire is to baseball games, I believe that the use of the term degrades our public discourse and serves only to deepen our chasms within the electorates.

I’m in the midst of a campaign for state auditor, not a competition between good and evil. That’s because I don’t believe that the other candidates are bad people filled with malintent. I simply believe that we have different ideas about what good and efficient government looks like, what’s important to the people of Massachusetts, and what sort of experience best suits one to sit behind the auditor’s desk and deliver accountability on Beacon Hill.

That’s why I have been consistently saying that my campaign is about professionalism and not politics, a motto I will bring to the state auditor’s office should I be elected in November. I believe that the people of the Commonwealth are exhausted by the incessant vitriol that dominates the airwaves and especially social media. So much of the angry rhetoric that we are seeing in the political arena is emanating online, where people have divided into two stovepipes sharing the sort of language we heard from some at the convention. Few can argue that our public discourse is improving, and it’s a worrisome trend.

Voters today have real problems with which to contend in 2022. Skyrocketing inflation. Soaring gas prices. Out of control tuitions. Record numbers of deaths by overdose. Never-ending violence in our streets and even in our schools. They have little time and even less tolerance for efforts to label people as evil simply because they have different ideas about how best to deliver a more perfect Commonwealth.

After the events in Uvalde, Texas, last week, it’s perhaps well for us to step back and consider what evil truly looks like. I happen to know. During my career as both a federal and private investigator, I have had the occasion to look it in the eye. I have sat across the table from Nazi war criminals and I have spent untold hours in prisons talking to killers and rapists. I’ve worked to stop terrorists and met with mob bosses. I know evil, and Democrats aren’t it.

And neither, by the way, are Republicans.

Anthony Amore of Winchester is a candidate for Massachusetts state auditor.