Where America's day begins

The Reverend Billy Talen

Alright ladies and germs. It’s finally here, the day of forgotten elections. Well, I guess if you were the local collegeville barber, which also means that you are running for your sixth consecutive term as mayor of this shithole, I guess it would matter to you. I mean, who really has an election on off year? I mean serously.

What, what’s that? New York city is holding its general election today also? Is it? Oh, well, I’m glad I sent that absentee ballot in then.

Yes, that’s right, I registered to vote back home. No offence to Mike Vereb and all those local dandydates running for ‘office’ here in past-still’Vania, but I care more about sending Bloomberg back to city hall than sending whoever that intrenched barber is back to the converted 7-11 that is the Collegeville municipal building. Though, despite my recommitment to the Empire state, the commonwealth of PA has yet to realize that I have no standing to vote in this place and has sent me three voter registration cards since I sent my first primary absentee ballot (on which I wrote in my metal-music and cat obsessed friend Dan for the democratic candidate for mayor.)

Sadly, Dan didn’t win and I was forced to chose between the other candidates including the Reverend Billy Talen, a minister who attempts to rid banks of their evil by staging mass exorcisms in the lobbies of their headquarters.

Also I could have voted for one of the many single issue candidates like Jimmy McMillan, the founder and likely-lone registrant of the ‘Rent Is too Damn High‘ party. After much consideration, I decided to stick with Mikey Bloomberg.

To be serious, I am voting for Bloomberg over Thompson for a number of reasons, his experience, his record and his preparedness for the job, but one specific one sticks out in my mind.

There once was a neighborhood Public High School on the upper east side, Julia Richmond High School. As far as I can tell, it never functioned at a level befitting the standards of City Schools (or more likely, those well-to-do upper east siders who sent their kids to private or out of neighborhood public schools). After years of declining test-scores and such, the city shut the school down. The school’s fractured corpse now houses numerous small schools — that largely serve out-of-neighborhood or special needs students.

The ‘complex,’ as it came to be known, became a political third rail. Any public official who came to support the status quo was seen by Upper East Side voters as not looking out for the neighborhood. Those public officials who called for its closure or reconstitution as a ‘neighborhood school,’ exposed themselves to charges of racism or class-ism as the complex came to serve mostly low-income and minority students.

Admitting a quagmire, local Upper East Side parents and a few local officials put together a campaign to open a new neighborhood public High School. The campaign made tracks and eventually a high school was to be opened. In around 1999, at a rally outside of the proposed site, in walked Board of Education President Bill Thompson who, with words drenched in the sweat of political ladder climbing, congratulated those gathered on what “we’d” accomplished. Bill Thompson was no part of this endeavor other than as a retrospective leech of its grassroots appeal, which would turn into a nice foundation of Upper East Side support come elections in ‘01. I was there and it made a huge impression on me, even at young age. All together, Bloomberg and Thompson aren’t so far apart in terms of their opinions, but as character goes, it’s a clear choice and that’s who I’m sticking with.

Though, leave it to Rudy Giuliani and his budding Gubernatorial bid to nearly ruin it for me. True to form, the main theme of Giuliani’s endorsement of Bloomberg was ‘do you really want to go back to the days of Dinkins?’ It isn’t a coincidence that, in front of an audience consisting of mostly Brooklyn Orthodox Jews, Giuliani connected one black politician to the one at the helm during the Crown Heights riot. Racially tinged pandering? I think so, and so did the New York Times.

As far as the rest of the posts are concerned, I voted the Democratic ticket. In the Democratic primary however, I voted for the following people:

Mayor: Dan Barlekamp (lost)

Public Advocate: Mark Green (lost)

Comptroller: John Liu (won)

Manhattan Borough President: Scott Stringer (won)

Manhattan District Attorney: Leslie Crocker Snyder (lost)

As far as the rest of the country is concerned, I am hoping Democrats win across the board, though that looks unlikely in Virginia and only God knows what will happen in NJ, but I got a bad feeling. The one place that I am not sure if I want the Democrats to win is that Zany NY 23rd House District Special Election. As brought up by Nate Silver in a recent article, a win by the Conservative Doug Hoffman would embolden Rethugicans to nominate fewer electable centrists and stick to arch-conservatives whose current level electability isn’t sustainable. Also, it wouldn’t really be a loss as it’s likely that the current NY-23rd will get Gerrymandered out of existence come the 2010 Census.

Best of luck as the numbers roll in.