Editor,

I absolutely love Whidbey General Hospital and all my experiences there have been very positive. An experienced leader in this county, I’ve been carefully following the debate over the hospital commissioner seat and it’s clear that Rob Born and his lack of hands-on experience, knowledge and his bullying “My Way or the Highway” style would jeopardize what the hospital now does so well, not to speak of his ambitions to end WGH’s independence as a small but highly capable, locally-led institution.

I’ve stayed out of this fight until Born, in a Sept. 19 letter to the Whidbey News Times, referred to my friend (and sitting hospital commissioner) Grethe Cammermeyer as a “hatemonger” and “character assassin.” Col. Cammermeyer is a person I (and the nation) know to be of the highest integrity. Born’s defamation of her was his Bridge Too Far.

Remember a few years back when a whole bunch of people who should have known better stayed away from the polls and we got Kelly Emerson, a county commissioner so bad that even her supporters breathed a sigh of relief when she finally left. Let’s not make the same mistake here. Born could get elected if too many people don’t take this election seriously enough to vote. Hey, you can do it by mail. How hard is that?

JOHN GRAHAM

Clinton