Blog 11

So, another Election Day has come and gone, and a very interesting thing happened in my little ole' home town. I would say that my little corner of the world (and it is literally the corner of the state) is fairly provincial, staid, right wing, and a Republican bastion of supposed family values. Except for the rampant meth labs and arrests for possession and intent to distribute. But that is a topic for another day. Today, we are talking about the re-election of our female mayor, and voting in of her party as the majority party on the City Council.Now, granted this particular mayor is a Republican, which I don't personally get because a female Republican to me is like a water phobic mermaid. The two just seem to be at odds. But, she is a woman, and her election 4 years ago did cause some consternation amongst the masses, especially the old guard on the City Council. The Council was made up primarily of old men who had been in their positions for years, and the thought of taking orders from a woman was simply too much. This is where the problems started.

For four years, the mayor had to do battle with these male chauvinist yahoos. They would not back her on anything. The town needed a new library, which she backed and they didn't. The town needed a new entrance to a strip mall that was in desperate need of new tenants. The council portrayed the mayor as a spend thrift who was tossing our money around willy-nilly. So when this years election came about, I was less than surprised when one of the Council members decided to run against her. One of the council members even decided to chance party affiliation, presumably to avoid any comparisons with the mayor. These ill advised decision would come back to bite both of these gentleman in the ass.

The mayor won her reelection bid, with 60% of the votes. The Council member who changed his party lost his seat , and Republicans were elected pretty much across the board to fill city offices. Both mayoral candidates had run on the platform of bridging the divide that existed in city government. The gentleman thought that the way to do this was to preserve the old guard Council and get a new mayor who would go back to the way things had always been. Instead, the city spoke up and kept the mayor, and elected a Council that would work with her, and not the other way around. I am actually a little proud, for the first time in my life, to say that I live where I do. And I am proud of the mayor, even though we are on complete opposite ends of the political spectrum, for not backing down and for not calling the council out for their blatant sexism even though she had every right. She ran a clean, honest campaign and won based on her merits and achievements to date. All political races should end so well.