Today The Virginian-Pravda ran an editorial on the Virginia Beach Mayor's race http://hamptonroads.com/2008/02/raise-new-debate-beach-mayor It's the usual pro-Sessoms line that has been previously pushed in Inside Business.
The huge hole in the argument is that to get a Mayor who is pro-services, we need to elect a shameless elitist (Will Sessoms) as Mayor. As Vice Mayor, Sessoms regularly showed his contempt for "the little people". Do we actually want a Mayor with such disdain for the residents?
With Virginia Beach urbanizing, I believe we have to go to an urban services model. That will mean greater resources for some areas (i.e. transit, housing, etc.) than has been devoted in the past. However, it's ludicrous to think we can go to developmental urbanization without political urbanization. Yet Sessoms and his buddies are adamant about going to urbanization while maintaining an archaic political system.
We need a Mayor who is both a champion of an urban services model and the little people. None of the four declared candidates so far (Sessoms, Oberndorf, Weeks, and Moss) is. That's why we need a fifth Mayoral candidate who is and who can appeal to those who have been traditionally politically marginalized in Virginia Beach.
1 comment:
Moss and Weeks are cut from the same cloth, and both have no chance.
A fifth candidate must be in stealth mode right now, because I only hear the same 4 names. I don't know how effective he/she could be at this stage unless he/she has incredibly high name ID and can raise serious money.
The real race is between Meyera and Sessoms. He has the bucks, but she hass the grass roots.
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