Hot Mayoral Race?

I voted for Mayor Schramm when he ran for his first term. He seemed like a viable alternative to previous adminstrations. But, it turns out he was just a slightly different flavor of the same soup, taking the people's money and using it to ram his own agenda down their throats! After all, he is smarter than the rest of us and he knows best. There are way too many 'public servants' out there with that attitude these days.

When I first considered the options in the mayoral primary, I thought to myself, 'Anybody has to be better than Schramm!' I was fully prepared to go to the polls and vote for the best candidate. Unfortunately, after reading what I could find about the various candidates views, ideas and backgrounds, I came to the realization that there still wasn't a real choice available. Each candidate had their own little agenda that they were ready to force on the city residents if given the chance. Most of them gave lip service to cutting or holding the line on city taxes and then, in the next breath, started spelling out the things they wanted to spend our money on. Go figure.

The primary came and went without my vote. This is the first time since I have been eligible to vote that I have voted for none of the candidates. While I still disagree with the mayor on some core issues, I just didn't see any the others as an improvement. Change does not necessarily equal progress.

The primaries are well behind us now and we have two choices: keep Mayor Schramm and continue on as before or vote for Perez and get another slightly different flavor of soup. Anyway it goes, it'll still be soup. I would vote for the lesser of two evils if I could tell which one was the lesser, but I don't see a real choice here.

Hot race? Maybe in the media hype, but not in my book. It is a shame we can't find someone who is ambitious enough to actually serve out of a sense of duty without being so ambitious that they let their own ideas and agendas get in the way of the will of the people. It would indeed be nice to have a mayor who would run city government with a strict and frugal iron fist instead of using that iron fisted approach toward the citizenry.

Will I vote in the general election? Yes, I will - but probably not for mayor. I just don't see how wasting a vote on one of the two available candidates is a good thing, and there isn't a place on the ballot to show my displeasure by voting for 'none of the above.'