Tommywonk has the definitive history of the creation of The Challenge Program. And he is quite right, this program does great work and is teaching very advanced construction craftsmanship — if you own a house in a historic district or in a historic overlay you know how tough it can be to find folks with both the skills and the credibility with the local Design and Review folks to get the work done.
The mailer below tries to capitalize on the very good name of The Challenge Program to let Copeland do a couple of things:
1) Take credit for creating jobs — which is intriguing since the Challenge Program doesn’t create jobs, it is a job training program. And granted Copeland’s printing company employs people, those people aren’t construction craftsmen.
2) Take some credit for some “community cred”. The pictures tell the story and without his connection to the Challenge Program this would be a hard claim to make. And you can see the advice of a certain former city councilman here — who is being paid a pretty penny from either Copeland’s or the local R HQ on how to get said “community cred”. That former city councilman forget to tell his protege that he really ought to make sure said protege’s website reflects some of this inclusiveness that he wants to portray. Because, really, that is the real connection to creating jobs for the folks this piece is targeted to.
3) Distance himself from his party. “It’s the person, not the party” wants the reader to disregard everything that reader may know about the Republican Party (it isn’t even mentioned), and certainly seems to be facing something of a headwind based on what the Party’s behavior has been like — live on TV –for the past few weeks.
For all of the dead trees and muddled messagaing of this piece, you’d think that a place on the Hope Commission would be a cheaper path to getting some connection the to city’s diverse communities on your resume.
