Rant on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was an election here in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago.\u00a0 One of the offices up for grabs was that of Mayor.\u00a0 Last fall, the city’s voters decided to change to a “strong mayor” model of having things run.\u00a0 This meant we would no longer have a well-paid city manager, and a poorly-paid mayor, but one person doing both jobs for the high pay.\u00a0 This also meant heavy competition for the job, so there were a lot of candidates in the aforementioned election.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The biggest problem with a lot of candidates is finding a clear winner.\u00a0 Sure, somebody had the most votes by a good margin, but the city requires the winning candidate have the majority<\/em> of the votes.\u00a0 Not just more than the other candidates, but over fifty percent of the people voting for them.\u00a0 So when the dust settled the two top candidates were put into a runoff election, which will happen May 17.\u00a0 And that’s where the trouble begins.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You see, the top two candidates happen to be polar opposites, politically speaking.\u00a0 One is conservative, the other liberal.\u00a0 It’s a non-partisan race, but the runoff seems like it is not.\u00a0 The leading candidate in the April election was Richard Skorman, who could easily be seen as a Democrat.\u00a0 The man who came in second, Steve Bach, could be seen as a Republican.\u00a0 I haven’t heard many ads yet for Mr. Skorman, but I already like him better because of Bach’s ads against him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don’t like mudslinging to begin with, but that seems to be the focus of at least two of Bach’s ads.\u00a0 One is an endorsement by a senator, who mentions that Mr. Bach is pro-life.\u00a0 Another ad mentions that Skorman is pro-choice.\u00a0 This has no relevance to the office of mayor, and it pisses me off that it even gets mentioned.\u00a0 It’s designed to do nothing more than fan a few flames.\u00a0 The mayor does not vote on any bills related to abortion, nor would he or she have the power to veto or sign into law any such legislation.\u00a0 The job has nothing to do with this hot topic.\u00a0 Zip.\u00a0 Zero.\u00a0 Zilch.\u00a0 But Bach’s campaign wants to talk about it anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The important issues are jobs, jobs, jobs and if you want to round out the top five I’ll add roads and streets.\u00a0 Bach’s ads do not mention these things.\u00a0 They talk about how long he’s lived in Colorado Springs and how much he cares about the town.\u00a0 His wife is on one ad and tells us he’s a kind man, a good husband and father.\u00a0 These are nice traits, but none of them have anything to do with being a good mayor.\u00a0 What does<\/em> help are two things:\u00a0 Experience and experience.\u00a0 Experience in politics and experience in management.\u00a0 Both candidates are strong in the latter part, but only Skorman has the former.\u00a0 Bach has never held public office.\u00a0 Mr. Bach, of course, tries to make this sound like a good thing, or at least that’s the point of view he presented in a recent forum.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hope to hear an ad from Skorman’s campaign soon.\u00a0 I confess, I’ll probably be disgusted by it and whatever mudslinging it does.\u00a0 I hope it at least keeps the mudslinging to relevant facts, but knowing the political scenery it’s probably a distant hope.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, should I ever run for office again, I will endeavor to keep my ads positive and relevant.\u00a0 This may prevent my winning, but, well, that’s the way I roll, politically.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. There was an election here in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago.\u00a0 One of the offices up for grabs was that of Mayor.\u00a0 Last fall, the city’s voters decided to change to a “strong mayor” model of having things run.\u00a0 This meant we would no longer have a well-paid city manager, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":486,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}