They get letters!

Karen Felice of Stoney Creek writes to the Spec:
"I have met mayoral candidate Mahesh Butani and know him to be a man of integrity with a deep love of this city. Not only that but he backs up his talk with action, as seen in the downtown core buildings he has redeveloped. He also lives in the core. Do the other candidates? Instead of looking for ways to discourage competition and being dismissive of people a columnist thinks nothing of, maybe the columnist should be non-partisan and let voters make up their own minds based on fact."

Mahesh needs more of these.  Outside of the blogosphere, he's been quiet.  Too quiet for my liking.

Now let me channel my inner-Don Cherry (without the bare knuckle BS):

Look kids, if ya wanna to run fer mayor, ya gotta have a plan.  Before ya submit yer candidacy ta city hall, ya gotta plan out yer platform and how you'll run this campaign.  Facebook and blogging'll only carry ya so far.  Ya gotta plan yer fliers and ya gotta be prepared to talk about what you wanna do.   Ya gotta be ready ta go!

Mahesh has a lot of work to do and he'd better get to it if he wants to win this.

10 Tough Questions with Cal

I was recently asked by Cal DiFalco to be his guest for 10 tough questions.  I accepted his challenge and I am in the process of wrapping up my answers.  If you are looking for those answers, they will probably be up sometime in the next week.

I will let everyone know when they are done.

IDIOTS!!!!!

It's no big surprise that the local media was served with yet another tasty tid-bit of e-debating between councillors Sam Merulla and Bob Brattina.  And I honestly think this whole thing between the two of them is getting more and more juvenile as time goes on.  Unfortunately they aren't running against each other and so we can't decide to vote for neither. 

Bob Brattina at this point is vulnerable and with the right candidate, he may not be re-elected if he ran this year, but Sam Merulla is a different story.  Sam, despite his abrasiveness and grandstanding tendencies, is still quite popular in his ward.  There really isn't anyone that can defeat him.  But if you think you can beat Mike Tyson, be my guest.

But if there was ever a reason to dump the both of them, the third e-mail exchange to which all the media was treated is indeed a good one.  But unfortunately no one saw the exchange and to be able to look at it, you need to know where to look.  So this is one that will be swept under the rug.  But keep in mind that at some point someone will decide to clean underneath that rug and what happens next is anyone's guess.

Fred is in!

Mayor Fred Eisenberger has registered and his re-election campaign has begun.  He quietly registered last week and it is officially shown on the city website.  At this moment, the race is his to lose.  Without a known and credible candidate, he should easily win.

Unfortunately, Mahesh Butani may not get too far.  His confrontational relationship with the local print media will not help him and it remains to be seen if he will be on any of the talk radio stations, CHML or CHAM.  He hasn't been deemed to be serious candidate from the get-go which is too bad, but made worse by his compulsions in calling out the media for mocking his candidacy.  Can we blame him?  No.  I have someone better to blame.

His name is Michael Baldassaro.  Because of him, there won't be a single candidate taken seriously, unless the person can truly convince our friends on Frid that he or she ought to be taken seriously.  He has polluted the mayoral race to the point that the city was pondering a charge for registering to run.  They just wanted some way to make sure that whoever is running is actually sincere about it.  Perhaps Baldassaro is sincere, but he seems to have trouble understanding what the city can and can't do.  They can't make marijuana legal.  They can't make publicly smoking it legal either.  And any moves to do so will be vigourously opposed by the city council and they don't have the money or the stomach to fight the feds either.

Now as far as Andrew Haines, he is also a marijuana activist, according to Metroland newspaper managing editor, Mark Cripps.  Yeah, just what we needed.  He still has yet to roll out his platform, but perhaps we'll have to wait until he's finished doing some rolling of his own if the news is true.  For the time being, he will be looked at the same way Baldassaro has been looked at, but in a lower sense.

With that in mind, it looks to me like Mahesh Butani will not be taken seriously at all, which is really awful.  He's simply been crowded out by two marijuana activists and now the incumbent.  To say the least, I am really disappointed.

The mayoral race needs a credible candidate to step up and run.  The question is who will do that?  There are at least two hopefuls that haven't registered yet.  Terry Whitehead hasn't registered and neither has Tom Jackson.  So what direction will these gentlemen take?  Only time will tell.

Canada Flag Day + Politicians = Rumours!

Little did Fred Eisenberger notice, but the unofficial commentator of the mayoral race was actually right in front of him in the Canada Flag Day parade!  In my volunteer role as a side drummer in the Grimsby Pipe Band, of which my brother-in-law, Gordon Scott, is Pipe Major, my band was positioned in front of Fred Eisenberger's car and he got an earful of "no parking meters downtown," going through a stretch between New Mountain and Lake Ave. 

Nice to know their opposition, but it's not completely up to him.  He is only one of 16 votes deciding on whether or not there will be parking meters there.  The way I see it, if you don't want to pay any more property taxes, perhaps you shouldn't complain about them being placed.  After all, would you like to pay for your parking or someone else's?  But that's just my opinion... Discuss!

The civic elections are on people's minds throughout the summer parades since we know what goes with them - politicians and those who aspire!  My wife once told me that it seemed that all politicians do is parades.  Perhaps there's some logic behind that.  I can't name a single politician who never enjoyed basking in that "feelgood" glow.  There is a perception that it enhances their image.  The cynic inside me just wants to vomit sometimes when they do that.  I mean they could be more visible getting things done around the community and not just walking or riding in a lame parade.

So I did some talking before the parade with a local politician who happened to be a past acquaintence.  We talk now and then since I found myself getting more and more involved in civic politics.  I got some interesting insight in the politics of the city.  I got word that a certain faction of people are placing candidates to run in wards of their choice.  They chose one which they have concluded is one that can really heat up.  I was told to watch the Ward 11 race, because this is one that could get interesting.

In what way, you ask?  Ward 11 is the East Stoney Creek/Glanbrook area.  Now look at who the MPP is on the escarpment portion of this area.  A gold star for everyone who guessed Tim Hudak.  Another gold star if you knew that he is the current PC Party leader.  Don't be disappointed if you didn't know who he was.  He's not a bad guy.  It's just that his policies are Mike Harris-like and right now it looks like the inmates are running the asylum known as the Ontario PC party.  To make matters worse, he hasn't really been able to pin anything on Dalton McGuinty, because McGuinty is doing stuff he'd do anyway.  So he's really lost control on that end and a loss of a friend in Hamilton could be a game changer, but I doubt it.  He's got overwhelming support in Grimsby and the West Lincoln township.  Glanbrook equates to about half.  At best, it would make things uncomfortable.

But one thing is for sure.  A certain party wants to paint Hamilton orange federally, provincially and now municipally.  Does anybody want to try and convince me that there is no party politics at City Hall?

With more and more subplots emerging, this could end up being one of the most interesting civic elections in a long time.

Weasel-wording Hudak Strikes Again!!!

As reported in the Hamilton Spectator, it seems that Tim Hudak is still desperately trying to pin something on Dalton McGuinty's Liberals.  And he seems to always have trouble because these positions put him in uncomfortable places.

Case in point, in chasing after McGuinty over the HST implementation, is putting him in the difficult position of having to explain why the business community supports it, but he doesn't.  Furthermore, you can hear the crickets chirping everytime he is asked whether or not he would repeal the tax.  But that's another story...

The problem with his latest is a real doozy.  (chuckles)  The reason why the Stoney Creek Dairy plant is closing is because electricity is expensive in Ontario and the province can't afford to give subsidies like Quebec does.  And that's mostly because of deregulation and other insidious charges forced upon us.  And who was responsible for that debacle?  Why that was none other than Michael D. Harris, Timmy's BFF!  But I'm sure that like any good Conservative, they probably blamed it on some staffer who won't answer any questions that could be potentially embarassing to the Cons themselves.

Hudak is grasping at straws, looking for any way to gain traction on the Liberals, but just being a party of "no is not enough.  The PC's have offered no alternatives up to now and to make matters worse, the NDP has been consistent in what they are for and against and there is no one questioning their sanity.  They have been far more principled than the PC and if the Liberals are to be replaced, they are more likely to be replaced by the NDP for that reason.

So now it's official.  Hudak is a loose cannon, unable to control his minions, let alone himself.  And it's starting to look as if the PC Party of Ontario chose their leader poorly this time around.  It will probably be their next leader who will be premier, but not this clown.

Visibility and Electability (...with a visit to the NHL)

The Bulldogs will not play for the Calder Cup and so begins the speculation of whether or not the Dogs will stay in Hamilton.  There has been talk about them moving to a new facility in Laval.  It could be the prelude to something else on the horizon...

Yesterday, the Spec reported that, Fred Eisenberger went to New York to talk with Gary Bettman and fix some bridges.  It was a good move.  It is important that the city remains in the minds of the NHL, although my cynical self says that Hamilton has always been on the NHL's mind, but only as a city to avoid.  And the total expense to the city is a little over $1000. 

I don't see anything wrong with this.  It was a legitimate trip to market the city.  Where the NHL and Hamilton goes from there would be another story.  But let's call it as we see it.  It was a good spend.  There are obviously councillors who have obviously spent more on less.

But as far as Eisenberger's response to the question of why there was so much secrecy about it, I found it disingenuous.  The fact that we find out now, months after the meeting took place is surely an insult to the taxpayers.  But in an election year, timing is everything, even if you haven't said whether or not you will run.  His explanation of loose lips sinking ships brings us to another question.  What was really at stake if word got out about this meeting?  False hope?  For us, where Hamilton and the NHL are concerned, if you're not disappointed, either you never cared or you're dead.  More pressure on the NHL to admit that Hamilton is a viable host for an NHL team?  It's been pushed back for a half a century so why stop now?  Those walls are starting to buckle.

But here's the real deal.  Fred Eisenberger's biggest weakness has been his lack of visibility.  He just hasn't been visible.  While leaking this says that he has done some marketing, we know that he hasn't done enough.  And if he has been trying to be visible, he's been failing miserably.  When we consider that we had Bob Morrow, Bill Powell, Jack McDonald and Victor Copps over the 30 years before Wade. Over the last 40 years, we've had a history of vocal and visible mayors, until we come to Eisenberger and Wade, both disasters by their own rights, while Larry Di Ianni's term was one fraught with distractions.  So for the last 10 years, neither have been truly effective for their own reasons.

If he runs for re-election, Fred Eisenberger will be just as weak of a candidate as he was four years ago.  And as I said before, the election four years ago was more of a vote against Larry DiIanni than it was a vote for Eisenberger.  With the choices before them, Fred was chosen as an alternative to a term potentially continuing the distractions.  So based on the choices given, the voters did make the right choice.

But it doesn't mean that the election is devoid of issues.  There are problems I am seeing so far in the active campaigns.

One of them is that neither candidate has achieved some form of electability.  We know that Eisenberger, up against the right candidate, is toast.  But we haven't seen anyone who could be seen as a suitable alternative to Eisenberger.  Neither candidate is being taken seriously and part of that blame lies with one of those candidates who has been running again and again, making the elections a running joke and ruining it for the others.  But at the same time, the burden of demonstrating sincerity in wanting to serve, is just as much on the candidates themselves.  We still have yet to see the platform of one candidate and as for the other, we hope that he doesn't burn any more bridges.

Another problem I'm seeing right now is that the mayoral race has been way too quiet and that doesn't bode well for the newbies.  These guys have to start making noise (the right kind, Mahesh) and get themselves and their platforms known!  You can't get signs and posters out, but you can still do flyers, handouts, letters to the editor and a lot of other means to get the word out!

So we could be in a situation we encountered the last time.  But it's still too soon to say.  It will depend on who else puts forward his or her candidacy.

In the meantime, rumours are flying about new mayoral candidates coming into the fold.  Leave it to Cal to scoop me!  :)