Chris - a little post-election hoopla...
There are several campaigns that have made agreements with other campaigns
to pick up signs and sort them out and get them back to people. Getting
lawn signs up in the timely manner as dictated by law means that campaigns
join together to get the task done since nobody really wants a fine (or to
have their hand slapped). Cooperation does work in many places on the
campaign trail.
Also, Chris, I do wonder how you get that the Reformers got 4 people
in. Scott Vreeland was going to win no matter what or who supported
him. Tracy Nordstrom was almost sure to win especially with her
outstanding primary showing. - she doesn't count. Tom Nordyke was going to
win - no matter what - with the DFL endorsement and he never really stepped
forward and got on the Reform bandwagon - as I recall he stayed at arm's
length pretty much.
And last but not least, I have yet to figure out if Reform helped or
hindered me. Having always been at the top of the heap I knew MMA would do
better than me just because of being an Anderson but I honestly thought I
might be able to pull out a 2nd place.
I feel strategically the Reformers did make some crucial mistakes including
not realizing that it is very difficult to beat incumbents. Rochelle is
the only incumbent that lost in the entire City (other than my buddy Dean
and friend Natalie) but they were doomed primarily due to the Redistricting
battles.
So as much as I appreciate the raised level of awareness about the Park
Board, the confusion about the message and the way the message was being
said and what was being said left people with a weird taste in their mouth.
As much as Park Watch is different than the Park Reform crew it meshed
together with such mixed messages on facts and figures that the general
public turned around and said , bah, humbug - I am not going to vote!
On one last note I would submit that low voter turnout, voter apathy and
all the reasons people don't vote has a lot to do with negative
campaigning. People don't like the mud-slinging and the venom that seems
to get pulled out during the election cycle. It isn't pretty and it just
gets in the way of discussing the real issues much of the time.
While I am honored to have made it in the top 3 and to be serving the
citizens of Minneapolis on the Park Board. When all is said and done the
dynamic may be different with new people but it will still be a lot of the
same old, same old. I wouldn't take too much credit for making change on
the Park Board - as a matter of fact when the dust settles, Chris, the
Board may have just taken a step backwards.
We shall see, what we shall see,
Annie Young
re-elected to the Park Board - citywide
At 08:30 PM 11/9/05 -0600, Chris Johnson wrote:
This is sure a strange town we live in.
I always thought the expressions was "sore losers" but apparently we have
"sore winners" here, too.
Sometime between 10:30pm and dawn, some miscreants stole all nine (9) of
the campaign signs I had in my front yard. Note that 8 of them supported
losing candidates, so it certainly was not sore losers who took
them. Others with the same signs in their yards had them stolen,
too. Such selective theft certainly points to "sore winners" rather than
random criminal acts.
Otherwise, the elections pretty much turned out as I expected. The only
surprises to me were just how many votes Booker T. Hodges took away from
Jon Olson in Park District 2 (2,802 votes and 43.55%) while barely even
running a campaign and only throwing his hat into the ring at the very
last minute, and Cam Gordon's win.
It appears pretty likely that the FBI raid that took Dean Zimmerman's
computers, mailing lists, campaign materials, etc. yet brought no
indictments could well have made all the difference in Ward 6, where
Robert Lillegren won by all of 46 votes.
Despite shooting for the moon, park reformers did incredibly well in
raising awareness, getting 4 seats and putting others on notice with tough
races despite being a very small grassroots effort run on a shoestring
budget. This is in stark contrast to the many tens of thousands of
dollars spent by the opposition, much of donated by developers, and the
inside connections, favors and deals years of incumbency and gluttony at
the public trough provide.
And it seems to indicate that the outcome of elections are, more often
than not, determined not by a desire for good government or democratic
process, but by far less noble motivations. We suffer the bad government
of complacency, ignorance and apathy when we don't have an informed
electorate and better turnout -- which some would argue is exactly what
the self-serving power brokers want.
--
Chris Johnson
Fulton
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