After attacking opponent Dan Barbour about his ties to atheism during the campaign, newly re-elected Albuquerque city councilperson Don Harris must have had enough of your emails.
Instead of a canned response, he finally issued a real response to reader Gareth.
It’s the response Harris should really have delivered days ago:
Thank you for taking to time to write to me.
I appreciate your very thoughtful comments.
I will not bring up Atheism in any future endeavor, as I have learned a great deal from this experience.
Best regards.
Don Harris
Good for him.
I don’t know what exactly he has learned… Does he also regret the rest of his attack ad? Maybe he just wants to get all of us off his back.
In any case, this is a good step forward in acknowledging his mistake. He did the right thing by issuing a private apology. A public one would be even better.
This also shows that with enough persistence from atheists, we can get politicians to listen to us. Yes, Harris is just a local politician, but this is how we have to coordinate for the bigger battles in the U.S. House and Senate as well: Lots of well-written, heartfelt letters (Siamang has a great example) sent from all over the place and constant exposure of their offense.
We didn’t have enough time to do it here, but we have the power to change elections.