A friend and neighbor is running for mayor of Bradenton. In his campaign literature he calls himself an average guy working for the average guy. I’m sorry, but I will not vote for an “average guy.” We have a president who talks with pride about his academic record as a “C” student, and he’s been a flat-out disaster.

I don’t know about you, but I think we deserve above-average people in office. Heck, in today’s complicated world we need geniuses.

On the local level, we have three mayoral candidates. One is the current mayor. One is a former mayor. The election is November 6, 2007. After that date we’ll either have the same mayor we have now or the one we had before him. (sigh)

We’re also supposed to pick a city councilman for our district — except that we don’t really have district elections here. The entire city votes for each council seat. The well-financed (mostly by developers and other big businesses) incumbent, James Golden, is virtually sure to win. And same as in the mayoral race, his opponent is a former city councilman. (sigh)

These “rehash” races irritate me. We seriously need some new blood in local politics, and we’re not getting much of it. I’d run myself, but I’m not electable for many reasons, including lack of desire and a crazy-hectic work schedule that couldn’t stand the added stress of a political campaign. But I’d surely support and work for an intelligent, business- and tech-hip candidate for *any* local office, assuming anyone who met those criteria chose to run for office around here.

Ah, well. Another election, and once more I’m afraid it will change nothing. Poor little Bradenton will go on lurching into the future, pulled this way and that way by developers who start and then often as not abandon projects, a state department of transportation determined to make life as hard as possible for local residents, and other outside forces that work hard to keep this town from even becoming all or even a large part of what it could be with forward-looking, rational leadership.

More and more, I realize that I like living here despite our local government, not because of it. Even worse, I can’t take the libertarian position of wanting virtually no government, because that would totally open the way for developers and other rapists to totally ruin the area.

Fah!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:43 am and is filed under Bradenton/local, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.