Glenden BrownBack on the Street in Becker Yellow (and Nancy Saxton looks desperate)
I’ve been suffering a bout of the dream gombu this week and so I’m behind on posting on issues I’ve wanted to tackle.
I hit the streets again for Ralph Becker. I should have been at home getting over the Dread gombu, but I want to get this guy elected.Â
We walked in Rose Park and I found myself marveling at the paradox that is Salt Lake City. Rose Park is a solidly working class area with lots of comfortable bungalows from the 30s and 40s. The voters I spoke with told a consistent story - they want a safe neighborhood that benefits from the city’s growth. Rose Park has for a long time been treated as a back water, an afterthought in the city.Â
Rose Park is a unique part of the city - an area where houses give way suddenly to a compact commercial area with a market, a bodega, a restaurant, and then the houses start again. It’s a walkable area where residents can park their car at the end of the day, walk to the park or the market.
It’s also one of the most ethnically diverse areas of town, with a healthy population of immigrants. In house after house, voters said to me, “I’m worried about crime. I’m worred about growth. I don’t want city leaders who ask for our votes and then forget the West Side.”
DISTRICT FOUR.
This morning’s D-News had a great article summarzing the race between Saxton and Garrott:
It’s experience versus vision in the race for the District 4 seat on the Salt Lake City Council.
That’s damning Nancy Saxton with faint praise. I live in District 3, but was driving through District 4 the other day and I saw lots of Garrott signs, not so many Saxton signs. Consider this Saxton quote:
“I am experienced in city government as well as in practical application, not just in theory,” she said in her closing statement.
I’m actually pretty pissed off by that remark - Saxton is trying to paint Garrott as an ivory tower intellectual with no ability to function in the real world; it’s petty, offensive and beneath Nancy Saxton. It’s also a bad sign - she’s grasping at straws as she sees the possibility that Garrott will win growing and her chances are re-election shrinking.
Jenni, who lives in the district, says:
I’m in district 4 and I did have the chance to talk to a Luke Garrott supporter at the Avenues Street Fair a couple of weekends ago. I’m very excited about what I’ve heard about him.
He’s also the only candidate that had a canvasser visit our home (and maybe it was even he himself - I wasn’t home at the time but there was a door hanger on our home) before the primary when there were at least 6 candidates for the seat.
Nancy’s website has been down all week, Luke’s is up and running. Tuesday October 2 there’s a forum with Garrott and Saxton. I’ll try to get there and blog it.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Glenden,
You have so far evaluated this race on the amount of money each candidate has raised, on buzz, on primary performance and on web site management. You have presented Mr. Garrott’s 5-point “platform”, which has much in common with those of the mayoral candidates–and of George W. Bush–in its maximum reliance on meaningless platitudes and its meticulous avoidance of specifics that might allow any differentiation of one candidate from the next.
You have suggested that Luke Garrot is “a smart guy whose not going to make any disastrous mistakes”.
Finally, a politician smart enough to avoid making disastrous mistakes, by COMPLETELY AVOIDING the nasty obligations of leadership such as, for example, actually HAVING policy positions on controversial issues)!
While you are at it, would you consider any discussion of the candidate’s policy positions on controversial issues of critical importance to the management of the city? Such as, for example, what specific steps each candidate will commit to taking, to preserve wet lands and open space, and to reduce the carbon footprint of the city as a whole?
When, where and at what time is the Garrot-Saxton faceoff on Tuesday?
September 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Ray - I agree that what a candidate plans to do about key issues is important. The issues you seem critical of examining - fundsraising, visibility, buzz - are important in our current system. A candidate’s ability to purchase signs, ads, mailers and so forth plays a huge role in a system in which many voters are low information voters who may not even key into a race until the day before election day and as often as not will simply vote for the candidate whose name is most familiar or who has made the least notable mistakes.
I wish more voters could be more intentional when it came to learning about candidates, but the pyramid of rational ignorance comes into play - people simply have so much to worry about and focus on that, while they know voting and knowing about candidates is important, they often simply lack time and resources to dedicate to it. A candidate who can accurately summarize his/her positions in straightforward bullet points is doing voters a favor (as opposed to George W. Bush whose talking points were deliberately misleading).
I think the debate is at Crossroad’s at 5:30.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Thanks, Glen.
By “Crossroads” you must not mean the hole in the ground where the Crossroads mall used to be. Do you mean Crossroads Urban Center, and if so, where’s that?
Maybe we can meet down there and tag-team the candidates with penetrating questions.
Ray
September 24th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Sounds like fun (and informative). Are we all invited?
September 24th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
The forum is indeed at Crossroad’s Urban Center - 347 South 400 East at 5:30 on Tues Oct 2. It is open to the public.
I’m going to be pressed for time - I have other commitments that night and may have a grand total of 20 minutes at the forum, so getting folks there who can ask questions and record answers will be valuable. If you can write them up we can get them on OneUtah. If you check my live blogging of the mayoral forum you’ll see what I hope is a good model of doing it - trying to keep nuetral and report what they actually say.