Read Drink & Be Merry

At the close of the mayoral debate last night they thanked the 350 who showed up… Pardon? Must be new math. There was a good turn out (not 350) and a number of interesting people to meet. While Ross, Buttermilk & Mollassas and Tobacco Avenue live blogged nearby there was also Don (Save Richmond), Jon Baliles, FT Rea (Slant.blog) and possibly a few others I didn’t meet. There were also five guys running (ok, standing and talking) to be our next leader. They were:

Paul Goldman – Somewhere between Woody Allen and Marty Feldman with a good bit of David Kucinich. While I tended to agree with most of his statements I’m not sure if we would be seeing the rebirth of the downtown area if he had been mayor for the past four years. His is a needed voice to help remind people of the less glamourous spending and projects but I’m not convinced he would be an effective leader.

Robert Grey – Thurston Howell III. I’m still trying to remember the last time I saw someone wearing a blue blazer with brass buttons – it was either a yacht or country club. He. Did. Enunciate. Very. Well. Hard. To. Follow. Speech. That. Is. That. Clipped. Didn’t find him very inspiring nor very off-putting.

Dwight Jones – Probably the best speaker of the bunch. Did seem to say a lot without actually saying anything other than buzz words. Struck me as the person most able to take all sides into account and work as a consensus builder. Did manage, unlike others, not to roll his eyes and make faces when things were said that he didn’t agree with. He did promise me that he would do a drive by on Home Street to assess the situation in my neighbourhood. I’ll be interested to see if he does and if anything comes of it.

Bill Pantele – George Costanza. Showed a lot of disrespect to the other candidates by loudly drumming his fingers on the podium and sighing loudly when someone said something he didn’t like. His microphone really should have been turned off when it wasn’t his turn. Made some really big promises that would happen starting January 2nd. I liked some of the ideas but we just had a mayor who rules imperially, do we want to go there again. He just didn’t sound or act like someone who plays well with others.

Lawrence Williams – I guess there was another guy up there… He kept getting drowned out by Pantele’s drumming.

On some issues they agreed, on others they differed wildly. The problem, as I see it, is that with all the different competing jurisdictions (county, city, state) and the divergent interests and needs of the different council districts we need someone who can build consensus and move things forward. Another four years of gridlock and money wasted on infighting could undo the progress made in this city. We need the fiscal responsibility Goldman espouses and the big ideas of Pantele but I think Dwight Jones is going to get my vote.

Random thoughts on some of the issues…

Abandoned Housing – Seems there are about 1700 of them. One idea (Goldman) that was floated concerned seizing them, rehabbing and then making available to city police. Good thought, my neighbourhood’s rebirth was kick-started when a group rehabbed about a dozen homes, but who is going to pay for that? I’d like to hear more.

Gilpin Court – Accross the tracks from my ‘hood so of great concern. Lot’s of ideas but this one looks like it could get ugly. On track to be demolished but where do you put all the people. Concentrating poverty in one spot seems, to me, to lead to despair and crime. Spread them out all over the city and give the kids a chance to break the cycle.

Mass Transit – Pantele kept promising a trolley system for downtown the moment he takes office. Sounds cute but not sure how much that will accomplish. I looked into taking the bus from North Avenue to my store near Broad & Libbie when gas prices started spiking. Best case scenario looked to be an hour and a half trip each way. Ugh. My wish would be for light rail. A East/West Line from CapOne West Creek or Short Pump taking Broad to Downtown or Churchill and a North/South Line from VA Center down Brook or Chamberlayne to the Southside. Add bus lines for each neighbourhood station and you’ve got a system. Doubt it will happen but as one candidate said – ‘we can’t keep laying asphalt’ (sorry, forgot which one…). I feel the growth of Richmond will be constrained if we don’t have effective mass transit and this may be a huge issue as the world runs out of oil. Also curious as to why GRTC serves RVA and Chesterfield but Chesterfield doesn’t contribute…

VCU Expansion – They all seem to think it has moved far enough into the downtown area and it sounds like that it might be the end of expansion in that direction. Isn’t Virginia Union on shaky ground? Maybe a merger is in order. Doesn’t VCU need a football team?

Baseball – While the other candidates argued about location (the Bottom or Boulevard) Lawrence Williams stepped out of the shadows to remind everyone we have more pressing issues. Baseball is a ‘nice to have’ and would generate revenue (supposedly) but the city will not wither and die without it. Which brings us to…

The Budget – Personally, I was not aware that we may be close to circling the fiscal drain. I didn’t think we were flush, but the potential shortfalls the candidates were talking about were large enough to give pause. You look around the city and see the number of projects that are at various stages of completion (or simply holes in the city scape) and wonder what will happen if the money starts running out. Goldman is right about one thing, we need to finish what we’ve started before starting on too many new things.

Push polling is a rather deceitful practice that is not so much about gather information as it is about shaping attitudes. Ten to twenty percent of either side of the political spectrum have their minds made up and no one can change them. The vast majority in the middle, however, can be swayed through information or through misrepresentation. Push polling goes after this segment by phrasing a question in such a way as to change your perception, rightly or wrongly, about an issue or candidate.

Ask a normal, thinking person if they believe gays should be fired or denied housing solely on their orientation and the answer will be ‘no’. Ask that same person if gays should have ’special rights’ and that answer might change. The issue hasn’t changed but the person answering the question may think it has.

The most notorious example of push polling came in 2000 in South Carolina. Trailing after New Hampshire Bush’s operatives were getting desperate. Suddenly people were getting phone calls where one of the questions was how they felt about McCain’s illegitimate bi-racial child. Even though the allegations were false (he has an adopted child from India) the damage was done and we’ve been stuck with Bush for the last 8 years. Oddly, I think I would have been OK with McCain in 2000… Now he’s a bit like leftovers that have been in the fridge longer than you can remember.

So, here I am, enjoying a nice glass of wine on a Sunday afternoon, watching TV and playing a little Civilization 4- Warlords Edition (Ragnar of the Vikings, Diety level, barely holding my own…) on my new MacBook when the phone rings. Would I like to take a political survey? Sure, I’d love to inject my opinions onto the national scene. Ooops, turns out it is local, for the mayoral race….

Suddenly I feel a bit unprepared. I’m well read on the issues of Battery Park, the shortcomings of the city’s school system, and the failures of Doug Wilder but I would be hard pressed to tell you much of anything about any of the current candidates for mayor. While all politics may be local (thanks Tip O’Neil) the noise of the national race has pretty much drowned out the local one. Frankly, I was thinking about voting for Dwight Jones, solely on RVA Foodies recommendation, and, since I’m pretty sure there will be a run-off, paying attention to that campaign.

The questions start with your basic name recognition. OK, while I may not be up on the issues I am on the names. They’re asking about three candidates: Jones, Pantele, Grey. Hey! Where’s Goldman? Somehow I thought he was a contender. Hmmm…

After a number of general questions they start asking about specific issues. Crime (against it), education (for it), infrastructure (Hello! I live in Battery Park!). Then comes a number of questions about Pantele. Mostly vague questions concerning his stance on the issues. Phrased so vanilla that you can’t not agree. Yes, better schools. More police. Less infighting between the mayor and city council.

This was getting long and dull (much like this post…). Not for long though. The questions started becoming a little more specific, and vicious. I’m not going to repeat them verbatim here for fear of misquoting but… For Pantele there were questions about being in Wilder’s back pocket, questionable financial dealings, failure to fulfill promises and the like. For other candidates it was negatively phrased questions concerning clergy membership, conflict of interest business ties, and the favourite political slur in RVA – being a slumlord. I was feeling a bit like I was sitting in my new composter…

Finally, came the kicker. The closing and the statement that this survey was conducted and paid for by Friend of Pantele. Really? After some of the questions I was feeling like if I was in the same room I would want to kick him in the shins and there was no real way I would want to vote for him. If he really did finance this then he needs to fire his advisors.

But what if this was something else?

What if this was a push poll? Pantele came out poorly. Jones and Grey muddied. Goldman was never mentioned. Why? If you want to smear your opponents I guess you would want to distance yourself from accusations. I came away from the phone call thinking who would I vote for if not for those three. Then I thought who had the most to gain from the call….

It may not have been a push poll. If it was it may not have been financed by Goldman. What I did learn was that the mayor’s race may get interesting after all. That, and I really need to start paying better attention to it.