Dear editor,

I am writing newspapers in the 3rd District to offer facts for the upcoming July 26 runoff for the 3rd Congressional seat.

We live in rural Troup County and have a West Point, GA, mailing address, but do not live in the city of West Point.

Drew Ferguson was never our mayor. Mike Crane represented part of Troup County but was not our Georgia state senator.

As a matter of full disclosure, I did not vote for either candidate in the May 24 primary and am not directly associated with either candidates campaign in the upcoming runoff .

As patriots we believe that truth and facts matter; yes, even in the arena of politics.

Drew Ferguson had radio ads running full time on 720 AM here in Troup County. We are sure most who hear them will not know who he really is.

We received 14 of Ferguson’s direct mail fliers to our home in rural Troup County, and on three occasions we had two mailers the same day in our mail box.

Our property is the closest to the huge Kia factory. My wife and I are retired and attended over 500 of our Troup County Board of Commissioners meetings and 75 ,or so, of the West Point City Council/planning board meetings. Our purpose was to try and protect our little country property from any further intrusion by having Kia Suppliers come to our side of I-85.

There are those of us who believe it is important that people seeking public office be totally truthful and above board when running to represent the people.

I will only address facts about what Drew Ferguson said that were less than truthful in his mailers. The truth should be the deciding factor when voters decide who to vote for and that truth aligns with their belief system.

Drew Ferguson has said in his mailers he led the fight to bring 15,000 new jobs to West Point. That’s not true — some Southerners might have another word for this.

FACT: Kia, in a press conference with the governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, announced on March 13, 2006, that they were going to build a $1.2 billion automobile factory in our neighborhood. Ferguson was not elected as mayor until January of 2009. He was a private citizen just like you, and had absolutely nothing to do with Kia deciding to build here.

Drew Ferguson’s mailers state he is a “conservative outsider.” A total lie and nothing could be further from the truth.

FACT: He is the ultimate insider and part of the oligarchy — those 15 or 20 men who think it is their right to make decisions for the taxpaying citizens — in Troup County. There were four honorable Troup County candidates running for office in 2012. Drew Ferguson and the chairman of the Troup Board of Commissioners, Ricky Wolfe, formed a group of 16 to smear, lie and slander my wife and the three other candidates; none of which Drew Ferguson and his elitist insiders were running against.

Drew Ferguson was listed with the Secretary of State’s office as this smear group’s secretary and Wolfe their chairman. Wolfe and Drew Ferguson contributed $12,000 between them to this PAC of elitist liberal insiders. The (then) mayor of LaGrange, and the man who is now the Troup chairman of the Board of Commissioners, a former Troup State representative and 10 others in the oligarchy sent out fliers lying and slandering these four conservative candidates because they wanted to destroy them.

Drew Ferguson and his friends put my wife’s picture on the direct mail flyer with Barack Hussein Obama II as being “two peas in a pod.” There is nobody in America who has less in common with Obama than Ellen Gilmore.

Three of Ferguson’s mailers said he will “clean up the decay in Washington,” “Washington needs a good cleaning” and “Washington needs to kick their bad habits.” How disingenuous,and hypocritical after the way he treated my wife and three others who ran honorable campaigns in Troup County.

Drew Ferguson and these same members of the elitist insiders formed another group they called the Center for Strategic Planning; none of them being elected by the citizens of Troup County to these positions nor accountable to the taxpayers of Troup County.

They have used their influence and power to get the city of West Point, city of LaGrange and the Troup County Board of Commissioners to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars for their little private group of insiders.

A number of us citizens have attended their monthly meetings and like good liberals they talk about problems like the poor graduation rate of Troup County schools, but there are never solutions offered, or any tangible results about what they have done with our tax dollars to solve the problem.

Drew Ferguson as mayor has gotten millions of our taxpayer dollars for subsidized, Section 8 housing in West Point with a nice clubhouse and pool with built-in microwaves that we taxpayers paid for. Does that sound like a conservative to you?

We have not heard any radio ads by Mike Crane and only received one direct mail piece by his campaign.

What we do know is our conservative state Sen. Josh McKoon from District 29 is endorsing Mike Crane in the runoff election.

For those who don’t know, Josh took on the establishment in the state Legislature to have ethics reform, which limits how much lobbyists can give to state legislators. He was told to back off by the powers to be, but instead got a bus and toured the state to present his bill to the people. Josh and the people won.

Mike Crane said in his mailer we received he has kept his promises to the voters and has a track record to prove it. A record of how he has voted in the state Senate is a matter of public record for anyone interested.

If anyone wishes to discuss any of these facts for clarification I would gladly welcome their call. 706-594-5542.

Should anybody want to post this letter on their Facebook page please do so.

Early voting started Tuesday, July 5, and the runoff voting date is Tuesday, July 26.

Respectfully submitted,

In liberty,

Bill Gilmore

Troup County