Some thoughts

I was a bit surprised by a letter to the editor in the local newspaper where a person who was originally running for Mayor felt it necessary to remind everyone that he is still running for Mayor.

eh?

Well, of course this makes it a three-way race for the April election. There won't be any primary because it is at the discretion of the City Council as to whether there will be a primary. More on that later.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting race.

There is, of course the incumbent who would appear to have the logical edge in the race and then there is the significant challenger who is running hard, putting yard signs out like they're going out of style. So far, we have absolutely no clue about what each of these guys stands for. I suppose we'll be getting some information from the candidate's forums shortly.

I've heard comments from people in my neighborhood about both candidates and so far it's a "a plague on both their houses".

Nobody seems to like the incumbent very much and I suspect that has to do with the conventional wisdom that we have a "weak Mayor" system and he does everything he can to live up to it..

On the other hand, the major challenger has been described to me variously as "arrogant ". I've also been told he is into "privatizing" as many of the city services as possible.

The above-mentioned third candidate is running because somebody told him he'd make a good Mayor. Ooooookaaaaaaaayyyy..........

So I guess it's going to boil down to weakling vs arrogant....I suspect I'll choose weakling.

The Common Council really missed the boat by refusing to change the Charter Ordinance to automatically trigger a primary whenever there are more than two candidates for any City Position. I got the distinct impression from one of the Alderpersons that the Council sort of likes the idea that they can play (political) God by forcing and incumbent to go through a primary or not depending on how much they like the Mayor or maybe by how much they like the challenger. That attitude just rubs me the wrong way and I'm quite likely to rebel against it.

hizzhoner