Fairbanks school board candidate April Smith and her abysmal judgment

What we need in a school board member is someone with sound judgment, a person grounded in reality who can accurately interpret what is going on around them.

We don’t have that with April Smith, the incumbent running for reelection against challenger Bobby Burgess.

She has a tendency to misinterpret what is going on around her, whipping up hysteria at every opportunity.

In a textbook case exposing Smith’s abysmal judgement a few days ago, she defamed longtime Fairbanks writer David James on Facebook, accusing him of being a criminal, which he is not.

“You harass me and obsess over me in an unhealthy way,” Smith wrote to James.

She falsely claimed she had reported him to the Alaska State Troopers multiple times over the past three years. She claimed that she carries a concealed handgun when she waves political signs because of “fear of physical harm from you.”

She also claims that “you are virtually a stalker and disturbed.” She said he needs therapy and that he has sent her hundreds of emails.

“I just want the public to understand your issues and why I will not continue to engage. Get help, seriously,” she wrote.

No doubt she is angry about this column he wrote in the Daily News-Miner that said: “Smith openly solicits outside influence on our schools to further her personal agendas, dabbles in conspiracy theories, supports book banning efforts, and exhibits possible indications of prejudice. She is also at steep odds with fellow board members, whom she hectored while nominating herself for board president last year, telling them they needed to be brought to heel by electing the correct person to the job, ‘and that person can only be me.’”

He could write an entire column on the grab-bag of nonsense she spread about COVID-19, masks and vaccinations. “This is a depopulation effort,” she said of COVID-19 vaccines. “There IS evil involved. Do not let them near your children.”

In another Facebook comment replying to a woman who defended James, she alluded to secrets. “When a man harasses a woman and makes her feel physically unsafe, it is disgusting. To defend him and call him innocent when you don’t know the facts is disappointing,” Smith said.

“Many people write LTEs and many people email me regularly. Not everyone makes me feel afraid. I am actually a bold person who is not easily intimidated. So imagine what it took,” she said, referring to James.

Smith has refused to reply to those who asked her exactly what James allegedly did that made her feel afraid. She wants people to imagine what it took.

Alluding to alleged secrets that only she claims to know and saying readers should “imagine” just how these secrets would change people’s minds if only they knew the secrets is the tactic of a third-rate demagogue.

Perhaps James will have to go to court to get Smith to confess that there are no secrets that back up her claims of criminal behavior.

“Everything you are claiming about me is 100% fabricated and your comments are presently being examined by an attorney,” James wrote to her on Thursday.

There is no reason to believe that any of Smith’s claims are true. There is every reason to believe she is lying and is angry because James has criticized her performance on the school board.

First and foremost, the Alaska State Troopers said they can find no record of complaints by Smith against James. Here is the letter from the Troopers.

Since no charges followed these alleged incidents and there are no public records that the Troopers can find after a “diligent search,” it’s clear that Smith is making all of this up to improve her story, expecting no one will call her on it.

That he has sent her “hundreds of emails” is not true, James said, producing a screenshot of his email account that shows no letters to Smith alone.

James said that his practice is to write emails copied to all members of the board, not just Smith, and this has not happened hundreds of times.

“I have called you out on your actions a number of times, certainly not hundreds, which proves how delusional you are,” James responded, adding that she is a “compulsive liar.”

James is an unabashed critic of Smith’s. But he hasn’t done anything that comes close to being criminal.

That she is unable to distinguish between legitimate criticism and criminal activity is one of the many reasons she doesn’t belong on the school board.

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