Election Day
May 14th, 2007 at 8:51 pm by Susie
Well, as of 7 a.m. tomorrow, it’s Election Day here in Philadelphia. Since Mars also enters Aries (Mars, which rules Aries, is also the god of war), we can expect some fisticuffs, etc. at the polls. A time-honored Philadelphia tradition!
Honestly, the whole campaign has made my head hurt. My candidate (a dyed-in-the-wool bleeding heart liberal) has been painted by the local “progressive” community as an evil vampire who will suck the life’s blood out of the poor, while the candidate he’s tied with (a DLC Democrat) is being hailed as a progressive god and the founder of a new age. Go figure.
The other guy used to be an investment banker; i.e, a municipal bond salesman.
If you’ve been reading me for a long time, you probably have some inkling of how cynical I am about bond salesmen, and especially what I think of them holding public office. They are more than a little prone to work all kinds of interesting money and power deals on the back end that can’t be traced, so you can never really be sure what they’re up to.
My candidate is under constant attack because a bank he owned once dealt in payday loans. For 18 months. Because of this, he’s constantly smeared as having made “his entire fortune” off the backs of the poor - even though he didn’t. (Oddly enough, I’ve yet to meet a poor person who has a problem with his payday loans.)
Really, though, I think it boils down to this: Not Our Kind. He’s not culturally conversant, and he just can’t make witty conversation to save his life. He’s good with numbers, not words. He doesn’t have the knack of making progressives feel good about themselves - and God knows, that’s the narcissistic nature of things these days.
Now, I happen to feel about municipal bond salesmen the way Philadelphia progressives feel about payday lending - only worse. At least people who apply for a payday loan have the option of reading what’s in the fine print. Avoiding late penalties is within their control. Bond salesmen, on the other hand, manage to hide millions for themselves in the fine print, and the rest of us are stuck paying for it.
While this other candidate’s license is currently inactive, he did work for an investment banking firm that, shortly after he left their employ, got slapped with some significant fines for, uh, bribing some officials in Atlanta. They’re famous for pay-to-play practices.
This guy also serves on the Board of City Trusts and was, until recently, the chairman of the local convention center - to me, two more red flags. Both authorities are patronage Pez dispensers; the former is famous for secrecy. It’s controlled by state Sen. Vince Fumo, who is currently under a multi-count (over 100) indictment. (The story is that this candidate is on the trust board to “reform” it. Well, it hasn’t happened yet.)
And what does a convention center do, anyway? They float bonds. In exchange for those lucrative contracts, people get things: money, power, access. Playing pinstripe patronage games doesn’t make him evil - but it doesn’t mean he’s a saint, either.
Marked on the bell curve that is Philadelphia politics, he’s not such a bad guy. He’s not a progressive; he’s a typical DLC Democrat, someone with deep ties to the business community and a fervent belief in tax cuts. No matter what he does or proposes, though, Philadelphia’s self-identified progressive community (which seems to be made up mostly of people with post-graduate degrees who recently moved here) immediately hails it as progressive - which leaves me scratching my head.
Yes, the same liberals who snicker openly at fundamentalist Christians have managed to convince themselves that their guy is, indeed, the city’s personal savior and born without sin.
My candidate has some truly innovative, creative plans for the city, long-term ways to attack poverty. They’ve been virtually ignored by these “progressives.”
See why my head hurts?
Anyway, I’ve been called so many names in this campaign and accused of so many nefarious, hateful things, I feel like I’m back in grade school. I’m a sellout, a whore, an enabler - you name it. Even though I’m not.
What I’ve seen up close is the deep vein of class snobbery that runs through urban politics, and just how much the media distorts the political process because of it. (I’ll have a lot more to say about it after the election’s over and I’ve had some sleep.)
In the meantime, if you’re still undecided, vote for my guy. If he wins and you hate him, you can always come back and haunt my comments section.
I’d vote for your guy if I was there (which I’m not). Does this mean you’re out of a job?
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All true, but c’mon, be fair. His candidacy isn’t based on any of that — it’s based on his 15 years in City Council, where he often did function as a relative voice of reason and, yes, progressiveness. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t good reasons to favor your guy.
Good luck to your guy and I can’t wait to hear more of the inside stuff since mostly it was you under attack.
Eh, fuck ‘em. Tell me who’s calling you names and I’ll chuck tomatoes at them. Your dude did lose me and a lot of people I know over the last few weeks with some of the direct mailings. I’m not talking about the ‘progressives’ from upstate New York who have come to deliver us from evil either. You know I’m not a wilting flower, but holy shit that stuff is nasty. My first thought was that it was so awful that it was coming from Brady or one of his goons as a way of tainting your boy. Sadly, no. I think that direct mail/flier strategy needed to be fleshed out a little better, but what do I know?
Suze,
Hope you have a good day. You have a lot more to say about the class stuff and that’s what I want to hear about.
Anyway, I’ve been called so many names in this campaign and accused of so many nefarious, hateful things, I feel like I’m back in grade school. I’m a sellout, a whore, an enabler - you name it. Even though I’m not.
That is absolutely horrible, and it’s one of the reasons I hate electroal politics.
I almost voted for Jesus White this morning. I probably should have. The past two or three days have been fugly.
I’m bothered by many things in this post, Susie. I don’t think that most people viewed Nutter as a savior or as a “progressive god and founder of a new age.” In fact, many endorsements of him acknowledged unease with some of his proposals.
Knox wasn’t able to get his message across, perhaps because “he’s good with numbers, not words.” Call me crazy, but I think that the ability to communicate clearly and effectively is a central aspect of a mayor’s job. Knox’s inability to do this was a problem.
I think that the progressive community you excoriate in this post is far less influential than you make it out to be. I notice that most of the candidates supported by progressive groups in this election did not win.
I’m sorry that people directed hateful comments at you, but on the candidate’s level, the only hate mail I received at my door came from your candidate’s office. It was ugly.
In the end, it seems to me that this post has more to do with your own relationship to the “progressive community” — as you conceive it — than with the election itself.
Don’t even begin to know about your recent campaign experience, but just want to sympathize that urban “progressive” politics can be pretty irrational and brutal. We regularly eat ourselves alive in San Francisco politics — and the situation is complicated by drawing all sorts of egotistical opportunists who vie to define themselves with the “progressive” label. And class roots and status are huge in how it all works. Please do write more about that!
steeveboy here,
you need to take a deep breath–of nutter provided smoke-free air–and regain some perspective.