Farewell To Joe Smith
Before the Joe Smith ads appeared in local papers last weekend, I had already made up my mind to ignore the endorsements of various organizations for their chosen slates of candidates, and instead select individual candidates based on their merits. While the “For the City” slate that swept the last election was instrumental in finally breaking a deadlock over Victory Stadium, they have continued to march in lockstep ever since then, without engaging in the sort of vigorous debate that the issues before them warrant. Rather than voting for another single minded bloc, I was determined to follow a Chinese menu approach and select from columns A, B and C.
Court Rosen was my column A choice, and for exactly the reasons that Joe Smith opposed him. He is young, and he has not lived his entire life in Roanoke. Our city and our council both desperately need an infusion of fresh blood and fresh thinking. Hopefully Mr. Rosen will be able to deliver on that promise, and also return a little civility to our public discourse.
My column B choice was Valerie Garner. She’s bright and energetic, and was only swept into the political fray by the incredibly foolish actions of the current council majority. For a novice with no political connections, she managed to put on a pretty credible campaign. I hope that she will continue to lead the fight against development at Countryside.
For my third choice, I faced a real crisis of conscience. I wanted to vote for Wishneff, since I agreed with his stated positions on most of the major issues. When he takes the time to collect his thoughts and put his positions in writing, the guy makes sense. Unfortunately, when he opens his mouth, he has absolutely no control over what comes out. I was willing to live with this before the Joe Smith ads appeared, but I suspected a Wishneff connection from the start. When it came right down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to support a man with such an obvious character flaw. When I opened the RT this morning and saw that Wishneff had admitted to being Joe Smith, I felt a tremendous sense of relief that I had not pushed the button.
Since I couldn’t bring myself to support Wishneff, I went back and took a closer look at my other choices. I don’t understand the overwhelming support for Lea, since he has changed his mind on virtually every major issue at one point or another. I can only assume that his popularity is based on the fact that he will go along with whatever the majority wants.
Anita Price is clearly intelligent and well spoken, but her single minded focus on education is problematic. I too believe that education is the single greatest problem faced by our community, but city council is simply not the body to address it. In spite of our new mayor’s pledge to the contrary, council has no say in the decisions of the school board. The only contribution our current council has made to the education debate is over the construction of football stadiums. We need people like Anita Price on the school board, but I’m afraid her energies will go to waste as a council member.
With Lea and Price out of the running, my final choice was Dale Edmonston. I only heard him speak once during the campaign, and I’m still scratching my head in bewilderment. He claimed that healthcare was going to be his primary focus if elected. Since when does Roanoke City Council have anything to do with setting healthcare policy? Amazingly, nearly 1300 uninformed voters considered this man to be a legitimate choice. In the end, I simply couldn’t vote for a third candidate.
Just when we think the drama is over, we learn that HUD has denied the conflict of interest exception for newly appointed council member Alvin Nash. In a fascinating twist, the city apparently received the undated letter on Thursday or Friday of last week, but it was not reported until last night after the polls were closed. Hopefully, when the outgoing council takes up the task of appointing Alfred Dowe’s second replacement, they will do a more thorough job of screening the candidates for obvious conflicts of interest.
Postscript:
Obviously, it never occurred to me when this post was written that Alvin Nash would place a higher value on his council seat than on the $500,000.00 in annual federal grants his organization will now have to forego. I find it disturbing that this story has not gotten more attention.