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Election roundup: Effort to boost Golar Richie may have backfired
By adamg on Fri, 09/06/2013 - 8:23am
Seems that instead of unifying the black community around a single candidate, a closed-door meeting of elders may have only fractured it.
The Golar Richie campaign yesterday issued a statement denying involvement in the effort to get certain candidates (who happen to be named Yancey, Clemons and Wyatt) to drop out:
No one from the Charlotte Golar Richie Campaign attended the event, nor did Charlotte or the campaign have any affiliation with the event or the individuals involved.
Kevin Peterson attended the meeting as a member of the Boston Black Leadership group, in his capacity of New Democracy Coalition.
Mr. Peterson's attendance at the event should not be considered representative of the Charlotte Golar Richie campaign. He attended in his personal capacity and that is formal statement of our campaign. The campaign was not involved, nor was it represented at all at this meeting.
State Rep. Carlos Henriquez, a Barros backer, says he and several other elected black officials had to crash the meeting, because:
It should be noted that myself nor 10 of 11 other elected officials were invited. There was almost no one under 40 invited. We invited ourselves because we know we are leaders and everyone needs to do the same. It's time to take our place, no torch or baton is going to be handed to you.
Adrian Walker writes that the meeting wouldn't have even been necessary if she sucked less as a candidate:
[H]er inability to formulate a winning message and galvanize voters is her own failing; it is not fair to ask other candidates to drop out, to help her consolidate support she should have mustered on her own.
The Ross campaign announced that housing policy wonk Barry Bluestone has signed up as senior advisor on housing and economic development. The Barros campaign announced that acting wonk Danny Glover has signed up as some star-power muscle.
In addition to a dedicated city office for people in recovery from substance abuse, Marty Walsh is very pro public health.
The last person in the entire city to register to vote will vote for Arroyo.
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Comments
What
Would people say if the "White Community" did the same thing? Vote for me because im White!
What
Would people say if people actually studied history and recognized that whites have been voting for whites because they're white forever?
While this is your website
While this is your website and you can do whatever you want with it. Condoning racism from one group and condemning from another is hypocritical.
It's called
Liberalism
It's called critical power
It's called critical power analysis.
think about race outside the resentment frame
It seems conservatives and reactionaries cannot think about race outside of the resentment frame -- resentment for 40 years of programs to increase access to our country's institutions for all, including racial and religious minorities, who have systematically been excluded for 100s of years.
Right
Thankfully, those times are long gone, but looks like blacks are trying to revive the tradition. Just look at Wilkerson and Turner, and let's not forget Jackson Jr. Dry those white guilt tears my friend, they're obscuring your vision to a point where you can't see who's in the White House right now.
"because they're white forever"
Usually peoples skin pigmentation stays the same through life, unless you're Michael Jackson...
This is nothing new - it's
This is nothing new - it's simple identity politics. You're not voting against someone who doesn't share your race, class and background so much as you're voting for the candidate who seems to resemble you as much as possible - if he or she does, you make some kind of connection that you've had shared experiences and have common goals. I wouldn't put it down to racism, unless the candidate clearly runs on a platform that runs counter to your expectations. I wonder how many African-Americans would have voted for Herman Cain simply because he was African-American? I know I didn't vote for Obama because he was African-American, I voted for him because he was a Democrat, and I always vote Democrat. If I had voted for McCain simply because he was white, that would indeed be racist.
Just look at how Curley also ran on a pro-immigrant, pro-Catholic Democratic platform against the blue-blood Republican Yankees like Henry Cabot Lodge. How much of the vote did Nixon get get among Boston Catholics in the 1960 election?
Not accurate
The larger idea was not 'vote for me because I'm black' but 'drop out so the black vote isn't fractured.' Poorly done and handled and assume strict race voting across the board, but it's basically like if Conley, Connolly and Consalvo were urged to meet so that the Parkway vote wasn't fractured.
Golar-Richie seems to be taking the Coakley approach to this election. Lots of important people have told her she should win, so she's assuming she can just stroll into office. John Barros has about 100 times more real ideas of how to lead the city - I can only imagine that he and his staff politely told these backroom characters to get lost.
"It should be noted that
"It should be noted that myself nor 10 of 11 other elected officials were invited. There was almost no one under 40 invited. We invited ourselves because we know we are leaders and everyone needs to do the same. It's time to take our place, no torch or baton is going to be handed to you."
If that's an example of Rep. Henriquez's command of the English language, then, just, um, woooow.
Opting out of the mayoral race
Given that the ballots are already printed and all these names are on it, it's a little late to be asking people to drop out. The time to do that was shortly after people announced their candidacy and started collecting signatures.
What you really need is Instant Runoff Voting
so that people can rank the candidates by first choice, second, third, ... as far down the ballot as they want. No vote is lost or wasted, nobody wins with just 11% of the vote, and you don't even need a preliminary election anymore.
That would be great
but the City Hall entrenched interests are not super interested in optimum democracy.