Democrats, Good Democrats
Stephen Rapundalo, winner of the Second Ward primary by a narrow margin, now seeks to gain student candidate Eugene Kang’s considerable support, appealing to Democratic unity. Dale’s excellent election analysis, on the other hand, considers Rapundalo’s victory, given his recent Republican affiliation, an indication that “Democratic loyalty is not particularly strong in Ann Arbor.” We can’t quite agree with either of them, because both seem to think that Democratic loyalty at the local level is a good thing. Many of us don’t support the local Sierra Club — the accomplishments of their national organization aren’t enough to redeem the NIMBY pseudo-environmentalism of the Ann Arbor branch. In the same way, the national Republican party doesn’t always have a whole lot to do with local party politics. It’s not quite like 1960’s Chicago, where any liberal challenger to Daley would have to run as a Republican despite having nothing in common with Nixon and Goldwater, but we’ve seen little to indicate that being a Republican in A2 is necessarily a strike against a candidate. What is a possible strike against Rapundalo is his last-minute attack on Kang for living part-time in a fraternity outside the Second Ward, which, along with his involvement in a homeowners’ association, has troubling implications for his policy-making with regard to students and renters.
(Note: the title is from a Grover Cleveland campaign song and should be sung to the tune of “O Christmas Tree.”)
bah, the fascists have it.
posted by Real Big on August 3rd, 2005 at 3:48 pmI’m surprised that you let Dale get away with this:
Ann Arbor, as the home of one of the nation’s largest institutions devoted to learning, thought, and experimentation, should be the state’s — if not the nation’s — laboratory for political innovation and cultural enlightenment.
Woo dog! How about “Ann Arbor, as a medium-sized university city, should be considered a petri dish for irrelevant politics.”
posted by Fred on August 3rd, 2005 at 3:57 pmIf they still made Democrats like Grover Cleveland, maybe I’d actually consider voting again.
posted by Dave on August 3rd, 2005 at 4:19 pmWhat if they made Democrats more like Strom Thurmond or Zell Miller? Or how about a Republican more like Abraham Lincoln?
posted by JCP2 on August 3rd, 2005 at 8:30 pmThe only thing that makes the uber-yuppies in this town cum is their property values
posted by David A. Fauman on August 3rd, 2005 at 8:37 pmGrover Cleveland was nicknamed “The Veto Mayor” when he was in Buffalo, doggedly shutting down every corrupt scheme the city council tried to pass. That was in 1881, when he was only a local figure, but word got around. Three years later, he was elected President of the United States.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on August 3rd, 2005 at 10:40 pmMore interesting Grover Cleveland trivia: In 1886, Grover Cleveland briefly disappeared - nothing in his room had apparently been disturbed, and there was a pair of his shoeprints actually burnt into the carpet. He returned with no memory of what had happened precisely 13 hours and 20 minutes later - numbers which correspond to significant elements of the Mayan calendar. It is reported that President Cleveland refused to talk about or even acknowledge the incident, outside of one cryptic statement to the press in the immediate aftermath of the event about having “learned too much” and explicitly mentioning that “the empire never ended”, much to the confusion of the reporter. Scientists have pointed to this 13 hour, 20 minute gap in the President’s life as corresponding to a variety of celestial events, and some even hypothesize that some extra-terrestrial force actually stopped the earth’s rotation for this period of time, which then raises the question - why Grover Cleveland? Also, after whatever occured happened, the man walked with a slight limp for the rest of his days.
posted by Real Big on August 4th, 2005 at 11:22 amHmmm? I thought you were going to mention the time when Cleveland had some emergency surgery, and it was so hush-hush that they performed it on a yacht at sea so no one would find out how sick he was.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on August 4th, 2005 at 12:21 pmI don’t see what’s wrong with pointing out that someone lives part time in a different ward than the one he’s running from. There was a recent council member that had to leave for that very reason (the name slips me). IF we have to have wards and if there are rules about residency requirements then it’s a fair topic. Personally I don’t see what the point of wards in this city is. I’m a homeowner but it’s obvious the way the ward map is drawn in A2 that the city purposefully wants to water down the student vote. Maybe the fight should be about wards and/or their boundary lines or about having primaries when the students are out of town.
posted by Thomas Cook on August 4th, 2005 at 12:37 pmLarry: Some would say that every president since that fateful yacht surgery was conducted has actually been Grover Cleveland, his brain having been removed and placed into the body of each subsequent president…but I’m no conspiracy theorist…
…or am I?
Thomas: I think the concern is that the move was an appeal to the student-as-auslander mentality, a last ditch move to characterize a candidate as unfit to be involved in the political process, not something done out of a legitimate concern for the rules.
posted by Real Big on August 4th, 2005 at 1:15 pm