While much of the nation (or the small percentage that actually gives a shit about who governs us) focused on the victory of corporate scuzball Terry McAuliffe over batshitloonitarian theocrat Tom Cuccinelli, the results of Boston’s mayoral race are also encouraging. Here’s why:
Boston will be one of the rare major American cities to have a labor leader serve as mayor.
When you think about how many people, especially in cities, are union members, the incredible dearth of labor members as elected officials is particularly telling. As Kevin Cullen noted (boldface mine):
If there was a message, both explicit and subliminal, in all the debates and some of the news coverage, it’s that the city’s unions and unions in general are peopled by greedy, unreasonable, insatiable Bolsheviks who would gladly make Boston go the way of Detroit as long as they can get Bunker Hill Day off.
Funny, but I don’t know union workers who think like that, but then I’m in the tank….
The Globe and the Herald editorial pages can’t agree on what time it is, but they agree on the danger of electing a mayor who is a union activist.
It’s perfectly legitimate to ask if Marty Walsh would be beholden to unions, especially given the amount of money that unions have given his campaign, but both candidates should have been asked just as often if they’d be beholden to developers or law firms or any number of other monied interests.
Or education reformers for that matter.
mikethemadbiologist
batshitloonitarian theocrat Tom Cuccinelli
It’s Ken, not Tom.
That’s good news and today this democrat could use some because I was very depressed about the results in Westchester County – which is just north of NYC. For County Executive, this very BLUE county has managed to handily reelect a disastrous tea-party extremest – Rob Astorino. The money from the right wing that poured into the Astorino coffers was simply astounding. As a local district leader I had the thrill of manning phone banks on several occasions. What I found was apathy. The republicans were energized, but the dems? Meh. Under Astorino the county has borrowed millions, faces and EPA fine of roughly $35 million and is in contempt of court on an affordable housing decision to the tune of about $40 million in fines. In a very blue county only apathy and big money can keep someone like that in office. It does show how easy it can be to buy an election. Local elections aren’t sexy. That makes them fertile ground for extremists to quietly gain traction. Democrats and progressives need to wrap their minds around this fact and quit napping during off-year elections.
Democrats and progressives need to wrap their minds around this fact and quit napping during off-year elections.
Too right. Here in NJ we had supposed Democrats backing Christie, on the basis that he’s such a moderate, you know. In fact, if you look at his policies, he’s anything but: draining the public schools and libraries of funds, removing regulation on pollution, anti-gay marriage, cancelled a tunnel project that would have brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the state, panders to climate-change deniers . . . The list goes on and on. It takes about two minutes to find out any of this stuff, yet many senior Dems in the state perpetrated this hideous pretense that the man’s a moderate.
As for his vaunted leadership over Hurricane Sandy? Well, a year later, 22,000 NJ families are still without homes (about 25% of those who lost them) — that’s not what I’d call a big success. And a lot of the damage NJ suffered because part of Christie’s pandering to the AGW-deniers (op cit) was to refuse funding for precautionary measures against just such an event.
The man’s a disaster for NJ, and yet everywhere you looked there were ignorant (or dishonest) Dems supporting him.
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