Briefly, endorsements

Luther M. Siler

This will be irrelevant to damn near all of you, but I just voted in the Democratic primary for the various local offices that are up this year. To wit:

  • James Mueller for Mayor;
  • Bianca Tirado for City Clerk;
  • Oliver Davis, Rachel Tomas Morgan and Karen White for at-large City Council; and
  • Sherry Bolden-Simpson for 5th District City Council.

I know Sherry and Oliver personally and they’re both good people, and Rachel Tomas Morgan has come by and knocked on my door a few times, so she gets points for being accessible. That said, the vote I feel strongest about is for Mayor Mueller, as his opponent is not fit for public office.

The election is next Tuesday.

94! 94! 9-9-9-9-94!

Luther M. Siler

I voted on the way home from work, and an hour and a half before the polls close I was somehow only the 94th voter at my precinct for the day. Voter participation is traditionally terrible for South Bend mayoral elections, which are always held the year before a presidential election and generally garner no more than 20% turnout, but that number seems lower than usual. The polls close at six; I expect to find out by seven that James Mueller has been elected derplord mayor of South Bend, probably by about a 60-40 margin, if not better. I am moderately invested in one of the City Council races, and hope to find that Rachel Tomas Morgan wins one of the three at-large seats, and … well, that’s about it. It took longer to get the newfangled voting machine to scan my ticket properly than it did to actually vote.

From the Credit Where It’s Due department: I have kicked Republican mayoral candidate Sean Haas some shit for his ungrammatical yard signs and his shitty website; in a burst of curiosity last night I went to his site again and he’s actually had a pretty major overhaul since the last time I looked– and, interestingly, the word Republican is never used once, anywhere on the entire site. I live in Indiana, so I’m used to Democrats trying to run as stealth Republicans (and I don’t appreciate it,) but I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Republican pull that move. Honestly, the guy described on that page seems like somebody who I might be able to vote for, but at this point in American history I am never voting for a Republican again no matter how reasonable they sound. Anyone still remaining in the party belonging to the person in the White House cannot be trusted. That’s all there is to it. If you’re a Republican and you don’t think that should apply to you, fix your fucking party. I’m well beyond sympathy at this point.

Honest truth: the single race I’m most interested in tonight is Qasim Rashid’s. Qasim is running for State Senate in Virginia in District 28, and I haven’t seen any polling or anything but the guy has been working his ass off to get elected. I’ve been following him on Twitter since well before he started to run for office, and he’s a fascinating, progressive guy who will do well for Virginia if he’s elected. I will be more upset if he loses than I will if the guy I voted for for Mayor loses, if that helps you calibrate at all.

(On the headline: I graduated high school in 1994, and the headline, chanted at a certain cadence and speed, was the way our class ended damn near every high school pep rally, with other classes yelling similarly but with whatever their year was. That cadence basically stopped working in 2000, and every so often I wonder what Adams pep rallies are like, because it’s been 20 years since it would work– although, I note, for anyone graduating after 2021 it works again.)

In which I endorse: local elections edition

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

This will be a brief note and not a full post, as I am barely even awake and really need to get myself up and moving, and chances are those of you for whom this is relevant know how to find my in my Clark Kent identity anyway– but I’m planning on voting early today, as is my usual preference, and I’ve decided I am voting for Regina Williams-Preston for Mayor of South Bend today.

The simple fact is that most of the current Democratic mayoral candidates are running on very similar platforms; there seems to be broad agreement about where the city is at and where we should be focusing our energy and our funds in the current years. We have an abundance of good options here. I am voting for Regina because in the years I have known her (through my job) she has built a reputation as a tireless, dedicated and approachable educator and as a member of the City Council she has been the type of public servant who looks for and builds consensus where it can be found. Feel free to seek out some of the national news articles that have been written lately about how she and Pete Buttigieg worked through some of her concerns about the 1000 Homes in 1000 Days program that convinced her to run for City Council in the first place, if you like.

The official election is this Tuesday, and early voting is available downtown right up to Election Day. A mayoral primary in an off year is likely to only draw ten thousand or so votes, so this is literally a situation where every single vote genuinely counts. I encourage any South Bend folks who are reading this to head down to the County City building today or tomorrow and vote for Regina.


In which this is exactly what I’m talking about

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

I say it every time I talk about local elections in South Bend: the actual election is the Democratic primary, particularly with respect to the mayoral race, because the local Republican party absolutely refuses to run anyone with the remotest shred of credibility. In the last several years their candidates include demonstrably crazy people and at least one person who was homeless while running for office. They’ve run exactly one credible candidate since I moved back here in 2007 and he spent his entire race running against the city. Turns out if you think a place is a terrible shithole where no one should live, the voters who live there don’t choose you to run the place! I know, it’s weird.

Seriously, this was an actual mailing by those fuckers. Forgive me, it’s the highest-DPI scan I can find and it’s not great:

… yeah, that’s even worse than I thought. It reads: RIP: Here lies South Bend, a once vibrant city now abandoned by business, overrun by violent crime, and driving people from their family homes because of high property taxes.

Now, put me in charge of this awful place that I obviously hate!

Yeah, good luck.

Anyway, I talked about Republican candidate Sean Haas’ shitty website the last time I talked about the mayoral race around here. I am compelled to let everyone know that I have seen my first Sean Haas yard sign, and this motherfucker, who supposedly is a teacher, has no fucking clue whatsoever how capital letters work:

There are ten total and six unique words on that goddamned sign and two of them need capital letters and don’t have them. I dunno, maybe some of you out there think I’m being superficial, but this is a level of don’t-give-a-fuck that I would find shameful from a middle school student. I have both a former student and a former co-worker in common with Haas, although I’ve never met the guy, and while they both say they won’t vote for him neither of them think he’s a terrible person. So, fine, I won’t cast aspersions upon his ancestry or anything like that. But if your damn lawn sign has two typos and only ten words you do not get to be Mayor. I need people who give a shit in that job, and this guy clearly doesn’t, and furthermore he doesn’t have anyone working for him who gives a shit either or this abomination would never have made it out of Photoshop.

Or, y’know, Paint.

It was probably Paint.

So, yeah: when whoever wins the Democratic nomination wins 70-30 in the fall, this is why: it’s not because South Bend is so monolithically Democratic that a Dem win is inevitable– South Bend is in Indiana, after all– it’s because none of the local Republicans give enough of a shit to actually put up a nominee who is worth the money spent on his campaign.

(EDIT: I think I’ve decided who I’m voting for, by the way, but I think I’ll save it for another post and not step on this one. Needless to say, it won’t be Haas.)

In which I ponder

Luther M. Siler6 Comments

You are probably aware by now, one way or another, that my mayor is running for President. I’ve talked about it around here a bunch, I’ve donated money to his campaign a couple of times, and on my last candidate preference he was in second place. He has spent much of the time since then annoying me, but that’s another post.

Here’s the thing, though: South Bend needs a new mayor! And our mayoral elections are held the year before Presidential elections, so it’s this fall– and I believe early voting for the primary has already opened and the actual primary is May 7. There are, I think, nine Democrats running for mayor. The local Republicans have probably selected a local malcontent of one sort or another; they have not run a remotely credible candidate in something like twelve years, and that guy spent the entire election running against the city he supposedly wanted to run, and lo and behold we decided not to put him in charge of the thing he obviously hated.

(Which is another point in my long line of reasons to never vote for Republicans. Republicans believe that government is worthless and cannot do any good. Why, then, would I ever put one in charge of government? They will prove themselves right!)

Anyway, whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to be the new mayor. I don’t know who the Republican candidate is, but there’s only one and he’s gonna be some flavor of lunatic and about 20% of the population will vote for him and that’s gonna be it.

I have no idea who I’m going to vote for. Our local newspaper has been running profiles of the various candidates and is about halfway through them at the moment. I know two of the candidates personally (if you live around here, and you’ve ever seen a picture of Oliver Davis in a Santa suit, that’s my Santa suit) and have met a third a handful of times, which is really weird. Those three, plus the guy that Buttigieg has actually endorsed, are the four I’m looking at most closely right now, but I’m going to be paying attention to the Tribune profiles on the other four.

There has been no polling that I’m aware of. My gut tells me that James Mueller is probably the frontrunner just because of Buttigieg’s endorsement, but maybe not? I dunno. He sent out a pretty comprehensive mailer about his plans and ideas a week or so ago, and I liked what I saw, but I also feel like it’s time for South Bend to have a black mayor, and the other three candidates I’m looking at– Oliver Davis, Regina Williams-Preston, and Lyn Coleman– are all African-American.

So I’ve got some work to do. Road signs are starting to pop up all over town, so I need to start scouting out townhall meetings and seeing which candidates have credible websites and such. It’s a weird feeling, to really have no idea which of these four I ought to be pulling for. I mean, the presidential primaries don’t start for months and you go seven or eight candidates deep before I start getting into folks I don’t have opinions on. I need to hold the mayoral candidates to the same standard, I think.

UPDATE: I had a brief moment where I felt like maybe I was being unfair to Sean Haas, the Republican candidate. After all, when I wrote that paragraph up there I didn’t even know his name. So I looked him up, and this is literally the first thing that you see when you look at his website:

Two typos in your opening text is too many typos, and the rambling article that follows is an ungrammatical bloody mess. If you can’t find a proofreader for your website you don’t get to run my city. So. Bye, dude.