FROM THE EDITOR: Paid for by the Committee to Re-elect Donna Cox and Amy Riches

Surprise, surprise!

Look who ISN’T supporting this effort to oust a couple of less-than-stellar, but still duly elected Pahrump public officials.

Me. That’s who.

Yep. Moi. The whipping post for every conservative extremist, CCSCer and Cranky Old Man’s Breakfast attendee around these parts.

The guy who seems to rail against just about every thing Amy Riches and Donna Cox stand for does not support for a second their removal from office.

Riches, of course, is the town board member, and Cox the county commissioner targeted last week by a sweet married couple named Richard and Dona Goldstein, who apparently have a penchant for dipping their toes in the shark-infested waters that mark this town’s dysfunctional political scene.

The Goldsteins can count me out. I ain’t gonna do it. Not this time.

Sure, I will be the first to tell you that Donna Cox has as much ability to be an effective county commissioner as my dead Chihuahua, Taco, God rest his little soul.

And sure, Amy Riches is about two degrees separated from Daffy Duck. Seriously. Take former town board member Vicky Parker, cake some Angel Face on her, shake her really hard for about 20 minutes, and put a lit Kool cigarette in her dizzy mouth and then immerse her in big vat of 9/11 truther literature and, voila, you have an Amy Riches clone. (Run! Call 911!)

But I have learned my lesson verbally jousting with this community’s beloved whackadoodles. I like to stick to the elected variety when I do because at least I can look myself in the mirror. I’m doing a public service, right? The others, the clique they run with, I avoid like the plague anymore, except, of course, Andy Alberti, that failed perennial political candidate turned successful humor columnist — he still owes me some money.

And poor Shirley Matson, our duly elected tax assessor. If she’d just keep her little hands out of the county mailbag, we’d be on solid ground me and her.

No. Apart from being totally incompetent and absolutely unprepared to carry out their missions as elected officials, Cox and Riches are just fine by me.

I mean, I can really overlook that post on Riches’ Facebook page, the one of the Muslim man, kneeling in solemn prayer while being humped by a goat. Heck, Cox had a Facebook photo of a local cop with a gun to his head with the slogan from Nike, “Just Do It,” underneath for a while after she was elected.

Goat-sexing Muslims. Suicidal local deputies. It’s all in good, clean, right-wing extremist fun. That’s all folks! Nothing to it.

Unlike the Goldsteins, today more than ever I prefer the leadership of politicians like Donna Cox and Amy Riches. I really do. Not because I’ve turned the corner in my personal life or anything like that. My political philosophy remains quite intact.

No, I have a purely selfish reason for wanting more people like Cox and Riches in office.

See, I help put out a newspaper. Newspapers need stories. And really good stories, the kind that actually get read by living, breathing people, sometimes require colorful subjects, people prone to serious misconduct, verbal gaffes, who wear funny clothes and who possess a foul, wretched, cynical and totally delusional outlook on the world.

I will mine that cave full of crazy for gold every day of the week and twice on Thanksgiving.

More, more, more. I want more.

You go around recalling all these people and then there’ll be nothing to write about anymore. Budgets are boring. School board meetings. Snooze. New development projects. Yawn.

And I just bet, in fact, I can’t wait, when they pack this town board and county commission with more and more Donna Coxes and Amy Richeses (huh?). A critical mass of kooky will break this place wide open and the Pahrump Valley Times will finally have a shot at real glory.

We’re talking Pulitzer gold here.

Sure, the populace will suffer, probably lose tons of taxpayer money and even see some of its elected officials sent to prison, or worse, but it WILL BE entertaining and exciting if nothing else. That I promise.

That’s right. That’s how I feel. I’m kind of a bad person, I know.

So, please, dear local electorate, make a newspaper editor’s dreams come true. Take the next cranky, racist neighbor who screams at you about drones, and illegals and the collapse of Building 7, drive them over to the county clerk’s office, have them sign on the dotted line, paint some “Vote for Me” signs up and let’s get this party started.