In case you missed last week's Rhino, editor John Hammer spoke the Truth about the upcoming City Council election in his weekly column entiltled City Council Election Hinges on Holliday.
From all indications it appears that Mayor Holliday will run for a third term. This probably means that with perhaps one, possibly two, exceptions, we will again elect the same people to occupy the council seats that we have since the early nineties. Which means we will be stuck with the same lack of elected leadership we have endured for over a decade.
I had some conversations with a few Council members a couple of weeks ago about the lay of the land for the upcoming council race, one of those was with Tom Phillips. I started off my observations and questions by recalling to Tom another conversation he and I had during the 2003 race when I was challenging him and the other two at-large incumbents. His statement at that time echoed Hammer's sentiment in the above article. He offered something like, "You know that you are challenging my seat and not Vaughan or Johnson's". Being a bit of a novice as a first time candidate, I asked him to clarify and he, like Hammer, spoke The Truth when he pointed out that he is always the third highest vote getter, so it is always his seat that is up for grabs. Because of the business-as-usual Simkins PAC endorsements, Tom predicted that Don and Yvonne would win the other two seats handily. And of course, he was correct in '03.
Nothing seems to be changing for '05 in the at-large races except the fact the Councilwoman Gatton is running. She has skirted a campaign committment to only serve two terms on Council by sliding in the phrase "I meant in my district" somehow into the promise and thinking no one would notice. In my opinion, Gatton's at-large chances are slim. In light of the fact that she could barely eak out a win in her re-election last time in a district that is about as diverse as the membership of the Greensboro Country Club, my information is that her appeal to the minority communities in Greensboro is near zero.
As I continue to consider whether or not to run for an at-large seat in the upcoming Council race, the above realities weigh heavily on my decision. Actually, the entire decision now hinges on the question of whether or not I feel I could raise enough money and awareness and differentation to overcome the vote tallies brought on by the name recognition of Vaughan and Johnson, because I am now convinced that Jinni will be fine.
I say that my challenge would be to out-poll Vaughan or Johnson because the truth is, I don't think I could do a whole lot better of a job on the City Council than Tom Phillips even though he, too, has served since God was a child. If the voters simply swapped me for Tom, (a likely best-case outcome for my candidacy if history is our predictor) Greensboro would only be slightly better off after the election than it is now. I have several motivations for why I might want to run, but maintaining the status quo is not one of them.
I will keep you posted as candidate scenarios unfold - or don't - but for now I am dissapointed that many long-term Council place-holders won't recognize the fact that we need a lot more than elected caretakers for the job of moving Greensboro forward.
As they say, "lead - follow - or get out of the way"... the latter option would be the best course for a majority of our Council since they seem to have abdicated the first option long ago.
12:23:48 PM 
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