Been taking a break

Lots of stuff going on all over. Not just with the campaigns in Bexley, but everywhere from my dining room ('soft duckling') to Sweden Norway (Gore goes for the Grand Slam). In between:

Columbus Blue Jackets Hockey. Want to know what's more depressing than losing at home on a late goal that forces you into a shootout shutout? Doing it front of 7,000 empty seats? Maybe, but perhaps what's most depressing is being in a city where the local paper feels that it's necessary to interpret during the following Nash quote:

"Everyone would like to have a (Daniel) Alfredsson, (Dany) Heatley and (Jason) Spezza line (one of the NHL's best, in Ottawa), but you have to be pretty lucky. Hitch is just looking for the right combinations." (emphasis added)

Perhaps they should have gone further - "...in Ottawa, a city in Canada where hockey is also played professionally." Argh. How to make the best of it? Well, I just picked up two tix for a weekend game, literally on the glass, for $50 apiece. The upside to low demand is a buyer's market. If you want to read hockey, go to the sidebar and click on the Neutral Zone Trap. She's my favorite CBJ blogger, and she can gateway you to the rest of 'em.

Another blogger I read, but who I don't actually link to: Megan Mcardle. She's a national blogger and fairly conservative, but that's okay, as she's an economist. I sometimes think I should have been an economist. More often I think that perhaps I should have worked harder to overcome the impediments to actually becoming a career cognitive neuroscientist, especially now that the work I was doing is coming out in a nice venue. But I'm more than happy enough to be doing research on higher education, which is my new gig starting at the beginning of next month.

Speaking of conservative bloggers, the walking blogger stereotype Matt Naugle has decided to weigh in on the race here. He's narrowed his endorsement field to 7.

And in a final nod to other bloggers, A Mere Detour has picked up my slack and expressed annoyance with Pat Tiberi.

If I did read more bloggers, I would probably have a better handle on how folks are viewing the Stephanie Groce/FCDP tiff. I liked her when I met her, but I'm really pretty neutral on the issue of whether she should have gotten the official endorsement of the party in the first place, given the set of issues that are being brought up now and the general inconsequentiality of the endorsement in a non-partisan race. The time for labor, however, to express an objection occurred a while ago. I'm not sure how long ago, but less than three weeks prior to the election is a late hit. And then, even if the unions just now realized that Groce supports charter schools and pay freezes, perhaps the party could have said to them "yanking our endorsement three weeks before election day makes us look petty and stupid." FCDP would have some unhappy friends, sure, but would have done less overall harm to the brand name.

In the end, the party keeps its foot soldiers morale up (good), and Groce (with her vastly increased name recognition) wins her seat handily (I really am not sure who would actually prefer otherwise, at least this cycle). And Bill Todd finally gets a coherent talking point on education (Ugh).

And speaking of Todd, the CD did a piece on the Columbus mayoral candidates (mis)use of crime statistics. In that piece, the author characterized Coleman's optimistic reading of the numbers as making Columbus "look like Bexley with three-quarters of a million people." A strange indirect compliment for our city, but a nice indirect compliment, nonetheless.

Back to the homestretch here this weekend.

See, this is how it works - Updated

Like I said in the last post, candidates are welcome/encouraged to contact me if they need to respond to something in the comments. Bill Harvey has taken me up on the offer, with very good reason. As Mr. Harvey says:

I did not say anything to anyone about city employees and their future with the city other than this - which I have said (and will continue to say) publicly -- I will assume that every employee who works for the city is the best qualified person for their position until (a) I review their personnel records (b) I interview them and their supervisor and (c) I make my own determination reqarding their qualifications.


I don’t expect this to be something I will do quickly since, as I said, I am assuming the people who work for the city today are qualified. I also believe that these steps will be taken by anyone who would be elected. It is just good management.



The need for clarification arises because (pay attention) an anonymous commenter claims that another candidate had deliberately mischaracterized Mr. Harvey's position. While some people might have interpreted that accusation as simply an attack on that other candidate, the result was to inject that mischaracterization into the public discourse, creating the need to refute it. There's no independent evidence that the other candidate ever actually talked about Mr. Harvey's position (accurately or otherwise), so it is entirely possible that the anonymous commenter was going for a two-fer, smearing multiple candidates simultaneously.

As I've said, I'm more than happy to do it when asked, but I really don't want posts like this to have to become a regular feature, so please play nice.

Update - Matt Lampke has also sent a note regarding recent anonymous allegations:

I have run a positive campaign and am focusing on my ideas for Bexley's future and on the public and community service I have performed for Bexley in the past. I am committed to being your Mayor for the next twenty years if the Bexley residents will have me. If anyone would like to go to the source with their questions or concerns, please contact me at 231-8172 or by e-mail at mlampke@columbus.rr.com

On Comments

Every few months I do a version of this post. As we approach Election Day it seems I need a re-run:

1) I allow any comments that are not spam, and I allow you to post them without leaving your identity.

2) If I could require that you at least use a pseudonym, I would, but I can't, so I will simply ask nicely and encourage strongly: If you don't want to use your actual name/nickname, don't choose "anonymous" when leaving a comment. Choose "other," and make up a name. I don't care what the name is, it could be 'anon1' for all I care. When you post anonymously, people reply anonymously, and then you get comments like "I agree with anonymous that anonymous doesn't understand what anonymous is trying to say, but anonymous does have a point." Please don't start conversations like that here.

Special NOTE!! There is no known-to-me limit on what name can be chosen. It is always good to be suspicious of the contents of anonymous postings, you should also be cautious about assuming posts from individuals with real names are actually posted by the flesh-and-bone person with that name. For instance, if someone named "David Madison" posted a mayoral endorsement in the comments, you can pretty much assume it's an impostor.

3) For those who are inexperienced at internet forums (like comment threads in blogs), it is almost always better to leave the trolls/cranks/etc. alone. Do not engage. They don't care about reasoned debate, they care about pushing agendas and/or picking fights. You don't really want to help them. You will be tempted, and on occasion you will give into that temptation. Then you will remember why people keep giving you this advice.

I say this now in particular because there have been some sensationalist and rumor-mongering type hits on some of the candidates that have been left as comments on this blog. When I read a blog, and a post has only one comment, I sometimes read the comment. If it has 10 comments, I will definitely check out the comments. Taking on the cheap shots only tends to help the cheap shot artist.

If a campaign would like to respond to such a commenter, however, they can email me, and I'll try to get them front page space if they want it.

4) It should go without saying, but I don't endorse any comments, nor do I necessarily even like the presence of any particular comment, unless I specifically say that I do. I do like to encourage readers to comment and converse, so I take the bad with the good. A lot of good discussions have taken place in the comments here.

5) Finally, I would like to congratulate Bexley on the cleanliness of the campaign so far. I got an email from someone in another suburb who had created a brand new anonymous email account from a computer at their public library for the sole apparent purpose of mailing embarrassing legal records regarding a candidate out to bloggers. That's the sort of thing that leaves a grimy film on every one involved. I'm not a fan of some of the anonymous comments here at BB, but it's nothing compared to that kind of sliminess.

Video from the Bexley C of C Mayoral Forum

Time Warner Cable will at some point have video from the entire event available on the Local-On-Demand channel (our consolation prize for not having the Big Ten Network, perhaps?), but until then I have this: One of the questions asked of the candidates was "How do we persuade residents with modest incomes to stay in Bexley?" I really like this type of question, as it is just left-field enough to elicit meaningful but unscripted answers that really give you some insight into the thoughts and values of the candidates. So I took video of the responses.

The videos kind of suck, and the audio is worse, but each of the candidates responses (in the order they gave them) are below:

Scott Weinblatt



Bill Minckler



Matt Lampke and Gene Weiss



Travis Irvine, Bill Harvey, Robyn Jones, and John Brennan


The Columbus Messenger already has a story up on their website. Reading their version of events leads me to believe that I really did say just about everything I needed to say in last night's post. So on and up.

Mayor's Forum, The Quick and Dirty

Good turnout. Matt Lampke won the initial impressions by having 5-10 people with his T-Shirt on in a room of 150-200 people. That stands out when t-shirts are scarce. Then the room grew to 200-250, SRO.

I've burned up all my energy trying to get a couple of video clips together. That's pretty much failed, but you should be able to take a look at some of the works in progress by searching YouTube for bluebexley(if you put 'em on your ipod you can even rotate them to the proper orientation all on your own).

In the meantime, pending a real report here which may or may not ever come, my conventional wisdom meter highly distorted personal sense of the race says that Lampke and/or Jones could have made themselves the favorite, but neither gave a knockout performance. Scott Weinblatt has to be commended for trying to make a real run at age 18, but he's trying a bit too hard to sound credible. Harvey and Brennan are both pretty traditional candidates for this type of race, and there were no surprises either way, there. Gene Weiss? Something about Mr. Weiss rubbed me a bit wrong. I can't put my finger on it, really, I'll have to catch the video on cable.

So the winners: Bill Minckler did well for himself, perhaps gaining back some of the early momentum, but clearly the best performance relative to expectations was Travis Irvine's. He's intelligent, knows the issues, and has near-perfect comic timing. That's still probably not going to be enough to win him this election, but the guy's got a future, and who knows?

So, FYI, everybody thinks we need fewer consultants, more alcohol at Jeffrey Mansion, and no new taxes. If those are your issues, you can't go wrong.