Mayoral Mambo

The dance team of Mayor Jerome Stocks and Deputy Mayor Kristin Gaspar showed highly choreographed routine at the Feb. 15, 2012 council meeting's "discussion" of the mayor selection process. Their fancy footwork kept a fast tempo.  From start to finish, after the public speakers, the entire dais ensemble clipped through this mayoral "discussion" in less than 39 minutes.

This video clip below only includes the leading mayoral mambo, excluding Bond's mumbo jumbo ballot measure distraction (18 minutes), Muir's pirouettes via his role to make motions, turn the tables and stay in the background (under 4 minutes). Teresa Barth was ignored; move along folks nothing to see here. But, do look here for her dramatic solo. (plus other questions = 6.5 minutes) All of this was outside the featured principals' dance number shown below.



With real flourish the team hit their rhythmic drum beat again and again, that the mayoral selection process was broken and needed to be fixed. They have that backwards because the fix needs to be broken up. If this vote isn't upturned, eliminated or disallowed, no challenge to the council majority may have the power of the mayoral position for years.

The next mayor would have to be Gaspar as she had more votes than Barth in the last election.  This was assured by Gaspar's-Stocks' framing. Leading with the concept of highest vote getter as the measure of voter participation - which they assure us (like an immutable fact) is the solution to citizen's criticism.  (Speaking of which, remember when next highest vote getter, Tony Kranz, was overlooked in favor of friend Mark Muir in filling Maggie Houlihan's vacant seat?)

But, they add another obstacle qualifier, consistency. This would disallow any new election winner with the highest votes who wasn't an incumbent.  Finally, Gaspar-Stocks trot out operational experience in order to position the last 2 years of a 4 year term for the top vote getter as a condition.  This shoehorns Gaspar alone into the mayor seat in 2013-2014.  And, big leap finish . . . in the mayor seat to campaign for 2015.  And remember, they have included in the mayor mambo the turns for deputy are totally decided by the mayor.  Our girl, Gaspar has already proven that with enough money behind a candidate, he or she doesn't have to have any political experience, knowledge of issues or grassroots community support as long as there are big dollars, political moves and a script.  Classy.  That's some fancy sidestepping of our democratic principles with a smile right there, folks.