Dayton Mayoral Campaign, Race, and Yes, My Opinion

Mayor Rhine McLin and challenger Gary Leitzell met Oct. 14 at the Cox Ohio Publishing Media Center for the only public debate of the race that will be decided on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2009. Full hour long video at http://www.ohiochannel.org/multimedia/media.cfm?file_id=122536 (via @SSBohio)

One opinion I heard from someone who saw them all at C{space a while back can be paraphrased as this: Leitzell said privatize everything and let the free market sort it out. McLin said more of the same without any real data to back it up. Whaley and Williams could both be summed up as replying "What McLin said." And Esrati... well, he had some good ideas, but started sounding like a conspiracy theorist pretty fast.

Which pretty much sums up my opinion too. The free market's not done us much good over the last few years (largely because it's not truly free, but that's another rant). And the way things are is not really the fault of the sitting councilpeople. The current state of things would have happened anyway, no matter what they did.

Honestly, idea-wise I like a lot of Esrati's ideas. But I don't think he'd be a good councilperson. I don't think I would be either, and for exactly the same reason. We are both abrasive and not politicians. I think he, again like myself, would be great as a behind-the-scenes person. His ideas - when he's not busy espousing conspiracies - are usually pretty good. But I don't think he'd manage to get a one of them actually in place.

Leitzell has ties to the developer industry, and when a developer starts saying "free market", I start saying "conflict of interest".

McLin, Williams, and Whaley are not the most visionary politicians around. They've made decisions I disagreed with, strongly. But, they're competent. They're personable - and I mean that as in "they can work with people they disagree with", a talent Mr. Esrati has not yet learned [1]. And they've also shown they are able to change. (I'm referring, most explicitly here, to the adoption of a program like Buffalo's ReUse program to remove blighted houses and use the raw materials to make a profit.)

I do want to leave with two notes, though.

1. Dayton does not have a strong mayoral position. McLin is a councilperson, with not a lot more authority than any other. The real power-person here is the City Manager. Two points if you know his name, and two more if you know why that doesn't matter too much.


2. I wonder what role race plays in this... well, race. I can't help but notice that as I drive around, the Leitzell and McLin signs both follow rough racial demographics in this area. It'd be fascinating to be able to do a blind "taste test", wouldn't it?

[1] And yes, I have this problem too.