Passing Glances

The demons of work have kept me away from the blog for several weeks now. Thank goodness, I hardly had a thought in my head to share anyway.

Always fun to read a good in-print catfight between the mayor's wife and the mayor's challenger's wife. Actually, I shouldn't say that it's always fun, because I've never read one before.

The Shriners have apparently pulled out of the Dogwood Parade because of the $26 per-unit charge. Guess every group of eight or twelve guys in a different miniaturized set of vehicles counts as a unit. I for one always dreaded the arrival of the Shriners....it meant that the parade would grind to a halt in front of me for 20 minutes or so while they did their figure-eights. Now......if only they can figure out how to make those commercial "floats" be something other than "let's shine up the company truck at the car wash & use it to throw Tootsie Rolls from." Then the parade might actually be less than two hours long. More bands, more bands!

Ouch

The H-W got thoroughly scooped by its online competitor, QuincyNews.org, today in the breaking story about the state's attorney seeking an attorney general's opinion on the legality of Bud Niekamp's serving on two boards at once.

At first I thought, oh, too bad, the story broke too late for the Whig's print deadline -- but they'll have it on their website. Uh, no. Not only that, but QuincyNews's story was very well done, with a link to the relevant appeals court decision.

BTW, that appeals court decision is pretty darn unequivocal.

Post-Election Predictions

1. The glimmers of unanimity that had made a few appearances on the Quincy School Board are a thing of the past. Look for more acrimony and contention. With the teachers' contract negotiations coming up, everybody's going to pre-emptively harden their positions, starting with the prevailing wage issue and heading toward a potential strike. Fasten your seat belts.

2. The dull rumblings you would hear from time to time about whether it's constitutional for Melvin J. Niekamp to hold two elected positions at the same time are going to rise in volume. It was a moot point when he was at the bottom end of 6-1 or 4-3 votes; but now that he will likely be on the upper end of some 4-3 votes, it becomes a critical issue. Wouldn't be surprised to see somebody sue.

3. The city council has not been a hotbed of partisanship. During the Scholz years, the mayor always took pains to keep both parties relatively happy. But with a 7-7 split, it's going to be tempting for the R's to force the mayor into a series of embarrassing tiebreakers on controversial issues -- if they can keep a united front, and that's a huge 'if.' But that's hardball politics, folks, and I'd say there's a good chance that's what we'll see. And if they have any sense, they'll groom an articulate person to speak for them on city matters, with an eye to pushing another few hundred votes their way in four years' time. Their candidate this time was by his own admission a terribly uncomfortable public speaker, and he got to within 800 votes.

Send in the Cons

Convicts? Convicts?

Yoo hoo, where are the convicts?

Mmmmmmm, ain't got none. Coupla shady characters, yep. Definitely some shady characters. Gotta give him that.

Mary Griffith gave Dave Bellis a good quizzing on the air Friday morning although she could stand to talk a little less herself. I did like the way she pressed him, though. That was good interviewing.

It's hard to decide sometimes how aggressively to question somebody who's not used to being interviewed and who's not especially verbal in the first place. But when one of them runs for office, the answer is...as aggressively as you need to in order to get your answer.

Spring on the other hand poses the opposite problem. He's an experienced politician and speaker, which helps to explain why he did not give a straightforward answer to several of the questions at the LWV's forum last night. Bellis is easy to nail, Spring impossible.