Af­ter be­ing chal­lenged by Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's To­ba­go West can­di­date Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis to face her with­out a script, To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty can­di­date Joel “Nuttsy” Samp­son brushed her off, telling her to “take yuh mind off me."

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Les Coteaux Thurs­day night, Samp­son, read­ing from a pre­pared speech made it clear he had no in­ter­est in any pub­lic po­lit­i­cal clash with the PNM can­di­date.

“Let me make it pel­lu­cid­ly clear—I do not need to meet you any­where to fight in any po­lit­i­cal ring. That’s not my lane. That’s not my mis­sion,” Samp­son said. “So please, ac­cord­ing to Richard Spice, take your mind off me.”

His re­sponse came af­ter Cud­joe-Lewis, speak­ing at the Buc­coo In­te­grat­ed Fa­cil­i­ty on Tues­day night, dared him to stop read­ing pre­pared speech­es and meet her in per­son to an­swer ques­tions about his record.

“Every night he talk­ing from a plat­form and read­ing one word at a time from a speech his po­lit­i­cal leader give him. He didn’t do any re­search,” she said. “But tonight was the night for him to come for­ward and speak—no duck­ing, no hid­ing, no bob­bing, no weav­ing. No Com­fort. Ap­pear Nuttsy, ap­pear and meet me.”

Cud­joe-Lewis al­so ac­cused Samp­son of dodg­ing the To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 de­bate with the eight oth­er To­ba­go West con­tenders.

“Mr Joel ‘Nuttsy’ Samp­son—yes­ter­day, I’m call­ing you by name—re­fused to show up be­cause you have a movie night,” she said.

But Samp­son dis­missed her chal­lenge, ac­cus­ing her of fo­cus­ing on dis­trac­tions while To­ba­go faced re­al strug­gles.

“Don't study who write what for me. Study what you didn't write, what you didn't fight for, what you didn't pro­tect. When it came to To­ba­go’s fu­ture, while you were mem­o­riz­ing lines for your next pho­to op, the peo­ple you were elect­ed to serve were cry­ing out for help,” he claimed.

Samp­son said he had spent his time work­ing to de­fend Crown Point res­i­dents, fix bro­ken sys­tems in To­ba­go, and fight for au­ton­o­my while ac­cus­ing the PNM of ne­glect and be­tray­al.

He said the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty was fo­cused on re­al change, not po­lit­i­cal games.

“To­ba­go de­serves bet­ter. Say it, be­lieve it, and vote for it,” Samp­son told sup­port­ers.