Analysis of City Council Election

City Council

• Hill-Smith      1049
• Bell                    896
• Moye                 803
• Buckhannon   796
• Gandolfo          744
• Loftus               557
• Bergwerf          548
• Miklas               449
• Piening             429
• Harrington      368
• Williamson      340

Congratulations to Susan Hill-Smith and Randy Bell!  They had a great day.  HIll-Smith will be a good city council member because she is thoughtful and a good listener.  Her campaign strategy of constantly emphasizing she has 3 kids was a good idea.  Buckhannon used the same strategy when his triplets were younger.  Voters love babies!  Bell will work hard and be a force to be reckoned with and it will be interesting to see if he is a good listener.  The jury is out at this point, but he is someone who has the ability and energy to drive change.

We will now see a run-off on Nov 21 between Moye, Buckhannon and Gandolfo.  I predicted that Moye and Gandolfo had good chances.  Moye is young, friendly, charismatic and is very approachable.  I also predicted Gandolfo would do well.  Many gave/give him little to no chance, but if you get to know him, one thing you will quickly realize is this guy has resolve.  This is an invaluable asset in a political contest.

I totally missed the mark on Buckhannon.  I did not think he had a chance and he was the #4 vote getter.  He was heard remarking to another that he did so well despite putting in very little effort.  It is still not clear to me why he is running.  And just what was his stance on the marina?

As predicted, Bergwerf and Harrington did not survive.  We as a nation are in an anti-incumbent atmosphere and they campaigned totally on their experience.  Their support for the marina was also a killer issue for them.  If they truly thought it would pass, they did little to no campaigning.

Regarding Harrington, he showed up at every event with a gold oval badge with his name and position on it.  If you have been on council for 4 years and no one knows who you are, you are already in trouble.  Furthermore, he is another councilmember I have sent emails to.  Yep, he did not reply to them either.  This is political suicide for an incumbent.

Miklas is a good guy and very thoughtful.  What hurt him was pairing up with Gandolfo.  What was the point of this?  Not only did it not help him, I think it hurt him.

As for Loftus, he worked as hard or harder than any candidate.  What killed him was his waffling on the marina issue.  First he was for it in the paper, then in the debate he said he had not made up his mind, then door-to-door he said he was for it.  He never made it clear why he supported it.  He only took out 1 ad in the paper and the ad and  his mailing both stressed his accomplishments on city council, again, not where I would go in this political environment.

Williamson did not do well, but he did not campaign and he did not spend any money.  It is too bad people did not get to know him better because he is a good guy.

Piening.  He had good ideas but he did not work hard enough.  That will kill you every time.

I will give my analysis of the upcoming election in a future post.