"dating"

Christmas in Alabama

Losing by winning kinda sorta or maybe not.

Our local races were a weirdly mixed bag. By registration, Republicans have 38%, the remainder split by independents and Democrats. In a community that routinely votes against school funding, a measure to increase that funding passed by a wide margin. We also passed funding for infrastructure improvements. Judging by those outcomes, especially the school funding one, we should have won our city council races; that said, we didn’t exactly lose there. At least, not yet.

For the first time in the city’s history, a television ad factored in. The ad was paid for by an out-of-area dark money group (with none of its members named), and clearly promoted four white male Republican candidates. One of those candidates, it turns out, lied about a past felony conviction; had he been a Democrat, he would have been immediately removed from the race; his “victory” faces a legal challenge. Another candidate had been hand-picked by the present council to fill an unexpected vacancy just weeks before the election; citizens’ requested that the seat be filled by someone not on the ballot, but those concerns were blatantly ignored, that decision being punctuated by the mayor tossing a hefty check to the happy appointee’s campaign; he “won” with a whopping six vote margin, and there are fourteen ballots with irregularities waiting to be “cured” and the race may yet go to recount.

We had three excellent candidates running for council, only one of which was in a solidly red ward; his loss was not a surprise. The other two are women with solid and impressive histories of activism and service. Women comprise 51% of our population, but there is only one woman on council (also the only Democrat). Latinos comprise 37%, and one of our candidates would have given increased representation (our only Democrat is also Latina). We also had many dedicated volunteers who were constantly canvassing and phone-banking.

According to the newspaper, our candidates benefitted from unusual “largesse” ($250) from the local Democratic Party, along with a $1500 blanket donation from Congressman Jared Polis. The newspaper obliquely suggested that these donations were equal to the $100K+ from that dark money group that paid for, in addition to the TV ad, slick full-color mailers that stuffed mailboxes in the contested wards.

The phrase that comes to mind is, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” We don’t know for certain what the eventual outcome will be. We DO know that our local Republican neighbors have demonstrated unaccustomed desperation in their quest to maintain a Republican chokehold on the city’s government in spite of prevailing demographics. The next few days will indicate whether they have even a shred of integrity left at all.


.

The Conversation

To our legislators:

The nation is hemorrhaging, bleeding to death from preventable wounds. We want it to stop. We NEED it to stop. PLEASE DON'T KEEP THAT FROM HAPPENING. PLEASE.


.

Suggestion to news broadcasters:

You are NOT helping the residents of that grieving Texas community when you describe them as people who "don't lock their doors". Why don't you just broadcast an easy pickings invitation to thieves and worse? A bit of professional responsibility, please!

.

As long as we're thinking and praying . . .

What the . . .

Went to check a local campaign update on Facebook, notice "cannot connect".

Went to post a graphic, and Imgur loads but freezes on home page.


Anyone else having issues?

UPDATE: Both are now working fine. But yeesh.


.

Random thought

Wayne's Word