“It’s sad that Asheville politics has gotten this sad and dirty.”

 Asheville City Councilman and mayoral candidate (he won or lost Nov. 6, the day this story went to press) Brian Peterson.

Just when I was about to seek medical advice for the cuts and bruises I was suffering from banging my head into my keyboard as I nodded off writing another Haywood justice center story, along comes this: Asheville politician accused by mudslinging newspaper publisher of soliciting young woman for sex.

Sex and politics — in the same sentence — right here in Mayberry. Is it possible that Asheville is finally ready to live up to its “Ashevegas” nickname we hicks out west of Buncombe use for this place of bright lights and dim leaders?

Maybe you’ve read about this. Peterson was supposedly being the good husband, getting up early in the a.m. to go downtown and do a good deed for the wife, a lawyer whose office needed its heat turned on. So off he goes, and in the continued spirit of kindness that must have been overwhelming him, Peterson slows down so 22-year-old Felicia Sorenson  a perfect stranger — could hop in his car. Felicia says Peterson had more on his mind that his wife’s heater, while the lawyerly Peterson says the 22-year-old just jumped in his car.

As a middle-aged man who has been around the block a few times — although I refuse to say which block — I can most assuredly attest to the fact that it is extremely rare for 22-year-old women to just jump in a car when it slows down. But who knows, maybe Peterson has that Brad Pitt-Antonio Banderas magnetism that just draws chicks, kind of like the libido ol’ Bill used to swagger around the White House with.

Anyway, a tabloid — you know, those small, sometimes racy papers which look and feel in some minor ways similar to the high-quality, highly-literate newsweekly you are now holding in your hands — printed a story where young Felicia says Peterson propositioned her. All of this supposedly happened in March, but Felicia’s run of luck continued into the fall. Tabloid publisher Peter Dawes recently paid her $1,000 for the dope on Peterson.

Dawes owns the Mountain Guardian, a paper I’ve never heard of, seen, or smelled. I’m only taking the word of The Asheville Citizen-Times that it even exists, so I’m hanging by a thread here. The Guardian is a monthly, maybe, that is distributed in Buncombe County, I think.

Being a publisher myself, I plan to get in touch with Dawes and find out how he does it. I can barely afford to keep the light bulb in our pint-sized fridge replaced so we can find the Pete’s Wicked Ale and week-old pizza, much less come up with $1,000 to pay for interviews. I guess I have a few things to learn about running a paper.

Peterson, poor guy, is the one who’s getting fricasseed over this whole thing. I mean, here’s a 38-year-old married guy who just wants to be mayor of Asheville. This is the town that is leading the way back to the 1960s, where hard-core environmentalists and touchy-feely free love advocates rule downtown. Just because the cops find him sipping a cold one in a convenience store parking lot with a 22-year-old single woman, what’s the big deal? Why would anyone — in Asheville of all places — question his judgment?

Peterson’s opponent, however, may be the one who gets fried over this whole story. Peterson denies any unsavory behavior, so discerning citizens are clamoring to know how an incident from March got dragged into the papers just a week or so before the election. Did Charley Worley or his supporters mount this insidious campaign just to win the lousy job of having to listen to to people complain about potholes and ice melting during hockey games in the civic center? Really, no one could be that pathetic. Could they?

So I just want to officially go on record as saying I’m jealous. Why am I sentenced to live a small-town reporter’s dream vicariously through the writers for the Asheville paper. I’ve already used their stories as my sole source for this column, and in doing so my envy has become unbearable. These people get to write first hand about sleaze, sex, cold beer, late-night pick-ups, maverick newspaper publishers, political mudslinging and all manner of dirty, nasty stuff. I, on the other hand, still have to finish — get ready, this is titillating stuff  another story on how county commissioners can’t seem to figure out the basic rules for buying property as they search for a site for the Haywood County justice center project.

Oh boy! Excuse me while I stick a pencil my eye.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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