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The council races are tightening up Got a comment? Make it here.
Hammett / Martin Martin versus incumbent Fred Hammett should produce one of the most entertaining races ever in memory as one of the brightest men in Venice will be taking on one of the... well... ...one of the best-structured box of rocks that city hall has ever used for terrarium filler. There, that's alright then. I was struggling to say something kind and I think I pulled it off quite nicely. At this point, all bets are on Martin, as hizzoner has become the figurehead for a variety of politically calamitous ills, including the ongoing short term rental debate, the ongoing airport charrette fiasco, high property taxes, gridlocked growth, and the list goes on. Martin's reputation as a deep thinker and the current mayor's reputation as a deep intellectual mudhole doesn't hurt Martin any, either. Never let it be said, though, that hizzoner lets his fiscal guard down. Just last month, he received notification that the city's PayPal account had been compromised, so he lost
Two problems here. For starters, the city doesn't have a PayPal account. But that aside, a simple mouseover on the link, had the mayor tried it, would have revealed that the link was disguised (gasp, imagine that) and actually would have taken him to a domain server in Pakistan. For even the not-so-tech-savvy, that would have been a clue that this may very well have been a scam email of the type usually referred to as "phishing" (phishing at Wikipedia). Again, that's if you're ever-so-slightly tech savvy or even if you may, say, sit on the board of a high-tech internet products company. Like the one that hizzoner sits on the board of directors of. So, to answer hizzoner: yes, you are supposed to do something with that email. You are to delete it and never pretend for a second that you actually thought that it might be legitimate. Or you can send it off to the finance director so that he can change the password on the city's PayPal account via a Pakistani scam server. The PayPal account that the city doesn't have. Martin has a blog. It's actually a fairly good one. Hammett is not quite sure what a blog is, but he's darned certain that his company doesn't create the software to make them. Only problem is, they do. Oh well, he's only on the board of directors, how much is he supposed to know about what the little people in the company are up to these days? Oh, it's part of their flagship product? Do tell... Long range forecast: The mayor's race is guaranteed to be a political comedy goldmine. I, for one, can't wait for the debates. Martin will cream Hammett, which will result in the first triple-digit IQ occupant of the mayor's seat since Merle Grazer, and that was nine years ago.
Woods / Lang / Budway / Carter Things will probably get uglier before they get better. Carter's campaign manager, Susan Clark, took extreme umbrage to commentary about cluelessness in the Carter campaign, which resulted in having Godwin's Law invoked on her in a flame war on the message board of this web site. Godwin's Law is an old internet tradition wherein anyone who uses the Nazis or the name of Hitler as a comparison to anything non-Nazi automatically loses in the discussion at hand regardless of the merits of the case that they are making. By playing hide-and-seek with the voters in trying (unsuccessfully) to keep her candidacy a secret for too long, Lang may have doomed herself before she even started -- a vacuum was created that sucked two other candidates in ahead of her. Long range forecast: Without Lang on the ballot, Woods would be a lock against either Carter or Budway. With Lang against Woods in a two-way race, give the seat to Lang. Voter discontent combined with Lang's strong voice and Woods' near-total lack of one will tip the scales. During the campaign, Lang will paint Woods out to be an ineffectual glad-hander and CQG poodle while Woods will take the high road and talk of his accomplishments and associations. This will leave the CQG to attack Lang and try to paint her as a bitch with brass bollocks. But, and here's the rub... A three- or four-way race benefits Woods heavily -- Woods becomes the clear winner due to anti-CQG vote splitting. This, then, leaves Gary Budway and Ernest Carter with a hard decision: stay in the race and play spoiler for Woods (and earn a lot of ill-will from all sides in the end) or drop out and lend their support to Lang.
Willson / Zavodnyik The winning strategy for each candidate will, strangely, have to be the exact opposite of each other. Willson can lose his cool on occasion, so it will be critical to stay even-tempered in the public light, while Zavodnyik will need to break out of his studious persona and learn how to wave an angry fist in the air in a convincing manner. Long range forecast: It'll be close, but at this faraway point, I'd tip the scales towards Willson, largely due to Willson's civic connections, name recognition, and the CQG money war chest.
John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times. |
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