Amy Drake called her own district poor five months into her first term on the St. Joseph County Council. In a newsletter to her supporters, Drake wrote: “There’s pockets of wealth and some nicer subdivisions, but there’s also a lot of poor areas.”
A lot of poor areas. Her district. Her voters. Poor.
I have been trying to figure out what Drake has done for those poor areas since taking office. I cannot find anything. Not on her website. Not in her newsletters. Not in her public statements.
She called her district poor. She called the people of Clay Township poor. The very people who wake up early every morning and drive long distances for work to make ends meet, to keep a roof over their family’s head.
On the far north side of Drake’s district, in a subdivision called Wedgewood Park, residents of one of those “poor areas” have been asking for years to get control of flooding.
On April 15, WSBT reported that the streets of Wedgewood Park, near the state line and U.S. 933, are underwater. Neighbors have started calling it Lake Wedgewood. Julie Lyon, the subdivision’s HOA president, told WSBT the drainage problem has gone on for at least ten years, that the dry wells are overfilled and uncleaned, and that when she contacts the county she is told there is no funding and the county is working on potholes.
Drake did not have to call her district poor. Nobody made her write that. She volunteered it. She sat down, typed it into a Constant Contact email, and sent it to her supporters under her “Unmask Tyranny” branding. In that same newsletter, she promoted numerous political fundraisers, including a sporting clays fundraiser at a hunt club in Michigan featuring Congressman Rudy Yakym. Five thousand dollars for a sponsorship. That is what shared space with “poor areas.” A description of her constituents as poor and an invitation to a high-dollar fundraiser in another state, in the same email.
This is not new for Drake. She called South Bend a “shithole.” She described individuals over the age of 55 as “probably at the end of their life.” She has called people inside her own party “a pack of wolves” and “mean girls.”
Drake labels people. South Bend is labeled a “shithole.” People born before 1971 are labeled “near death.” Former allies are labeled “wolves.” Her own district is labeled “poor.” Everyone gets sized up and sorted, and the sorting always goes the same direction. Down.
“Families First” is her campaign slogan. I would like to know which families. The ones in the “nicer” subdivisions seem to benefit from Drake’s legislative efforts. The families in the poor areas got a line in a newsletter. That is it. That is the whole thing.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster founded Redress South Bend and reports on local government and public records in South Bend and St. Joseph County. He is 31 years old and is majoring in finance. He is a Cleveland sports fan and a longtime season ticket holder of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
