You shouldn’t make too much out of an election that drew only 13 percent of registered voters. Still, there’s nothing good in Tuesday’s election results for Wichita Mayor Carlos Mayans. The incumbent received only 25 percent of the votes, while challenger Carl Brewer, a City Council member, received a whopping 57 percent. Even with a low turnout, that’s a statement.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Lindsay Beyerstein provides an interesting inside view on the John Edwards blogger meltdown. Beyerstein was approached by the Edwards campaign about blogging for it. She declined and warned the campaign about the dangers of hiring high-profile bloggers who carry a lot of "personal political baggage." What the campaign didn’t seem to realize, she wrote, was that "the right-wing blogosphere was going to try to get Edwards’ bloggers fired no matter what. Unlike the liberal netroots, the right-wing blogosphere is capable of exactly one kind of collective political action. They call it ’scalping’ — they pick a target and harass that person and his or her employer until the person either jumps or is pushed out of the public eye." Hiring controversial bloggers, Beyerstein contends, can hurt a campaign and undermine the independence of the bloggers. "Every campaign needs a blog," she wrote, "but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign."
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Bush backers have been blasting U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (in photo) for prosecuting Lewis Libby for lying and obstructing an investigation. But as columnist E.J. Dionne noted, many of these critics had a different view in 1998 (and vice versa for those cheering the Libby trial). "It’s certainly amusing that so many who were eager to throw Clinton out of office for perjury and obstruction of justice when he lied about sex are now livid at Fitzgerald for bringing comparable charges in a controversy over the rationale for war. Do they think sex is more important than war?"
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The greening of Hollywood extended beyond Al Gore’s win at the Oscars. More celebrities than ever arrived at the Kodak Theatre in gas-efficient hybrids. Ballots and programs were printed on recycled paper and organizers concerned themselves with choosing more environmentally responsible materials for sets and decorations.
Though this "green" effort seemed like a lot of shallow back-patting, more and more celebrities acting environmentally responsible may have far-reaching effects. The Hollywood entertainment industry enjoys a rapt audience of millions of people, not only in the United States but around the world. If anyone can make conservation of natural resources cool, it can.
Meanwhile, a free-market organization called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research is accusing Gore of hypocrisy because his house in Nashville "consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year."
Posted by Patrice Hein
Before the primary election fades away, a few observations:
Yard signs for Mayor Carlos Mayans were among those posted in violation of the city’s right-of-way rules — meaning city workers were in the position of having to confiscate the mayor’s signs. He and his supporters should know better.
In television ads, mayoral hopeful Darrell Leffew repeated his harsh criticism of the downtown arena. Granted, there is a lot of confusion on this point — some of it willful — but the arena isn’t a project of the city of Wichita. It’s a project of Sedgwick County.
David Grebenik, candidate for Wichita City Council, District 2, demonstrated that a campaign yard sign still has the power to surprise. His drew double takes by seeking votes for the "incredibly handsome David Grebenik." The candidate told The Eagle editorial board he was looking to get his name out; he also thought about doing another sign describing himself as "extremely nice."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Two-term Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., surely noticed how the state became a little less reliably Republican in the November election, when the Congress also switched political hands. It may follow that Roberts will face more serious Democratic opposition in next year’s re-election bid than he has in the past. According to the Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske, the first potential Democratic challenger being mentioned is Steve Boyda, husband of Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Topeka. Still, history is on Roberts’ side: Kansas’ most recent Democratic senator, Wichita attorney George S. McGill, left office in 1939.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Good people can disagree about whether LED billboards are an exciting innovation in advertising or a community scourge. But how can anybody pass even a small LED sign without finding it distracting? Even several blocks away or via a rearview mirror, such signs’ brightness and strobelike effects can be impossible to ignore. Yet Ron Blue, president of Clear Channel Outdoor in Wichita and Fort Smith, Ark., told The Eagle’s Carrie Rengers that "there’s no evidence that digital signs are a distraction in any form or fashion." Now that Wichitans have some experience living with more than 100 of these signs — including Clear Channel’s 14-by-48-foot mother of them all at Central and Rock — the Wichita City Council needs to scrutinize the company’s plan for six more LED billboards around town.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
