Category: New

We call it Babel Backward, they call it the Barrie Advance,

Editor picked a mayoral candidate,  who hasn’t a chance,

It keeps the record safe, picking an advertiser perchance?

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Peaking too early in an election campaign is to be avoided, at all costs.  It is the point of time in the campaign when you want the electors to go cast their vote because there are no additional voters for your campaign to win and you can only lose votes from then on.  It is because of this downhill slope that candidates go into serious denial if it becomes known that their campaign has peaked too early.  What frustrates politicians is that they really have very little control of the peaking of the campaign.

The current election in Babel is an excellent case study in peaking.  The front-runner in the Babel mayoral race, a former Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP), has already had his peaking.  It happened about four weeks ago.  The reason for this is that despite being a quite unfriendly person, he has the best name recognition among the mayoral candidates.  He represented Babel and the surrounding area in the Ontario Legislature until defeated three years ago.  He was defeated in that election for a number of good reasons but one of the reasons is that he never kisses babies, does not have many campaign workers nor does he seem to like making campaign appearances.  His campaign strategy relies on signs, literature distribution and a multitude of telephone calls, some by humans.

His major campaign promise is that, if he is mayor, he will allow no property tax increases.  This promise appeals to the people who are among the P-Oed voters.  These are the voters who are annoyed about something, dislike paying any property taxes, are frustrated because they do not understand city hall and want to get even.  They would know in the first year, when their property taxes go up, that the candidate lied to them.  It is his fault anyway because he agreed with his leader Mike Harris who, as premier, put through a law that said municipalities cannot run an operating deficit.  Mr. Harris also dumped welfare costs on municipalities.  The, then, MPP voted ‘aye’ and municipalities in Ontario lost control of their spending.

And that is why, his mayoral hopes are on the slippery slope downhill at this time.  In the past four weeks, he has been steadily losing support.  Two factors contribute to this.  As more and more voters make up their minds by checking out the candidates, they move to the decided category and the thinking voter does not like the former MPP.  The fact that the second place candidate is constantly moving up in the polls while the front runner goes down means that election day would have to be tomorrow for him to win.  He cannot afford to lose many more votes.

The only factor that helps him is that there is a large field of candidates for the mayoralty.  Three of the candidates will collectively garner less than three per cent of the votes.  They are the also-rans who show what a free country we are by letting anyone waste money trying to win political office.  There would be more respect for these people if they set their sights on a lower level job than mayor, their first time out.

That leaves the incumbent mayor, a former mayor and two incumbent councillors in the race with the former MPP.  The incumbent mayor peaked four years ago and has not endeared himself to the voters during his term of office.  It is predicted that he will get less than 3000 votes when all the votes are counted on October 25.

The former mayor who is earnestly seeking redemption has never really got his campaign off the ground.  He is personable and hard working and will probably win up to 5500 votes, which is not a bad showing.

The wild card in the campaign is the Ward 1 councillor.  This person jumped into the campaign late and lacks organization, fund-raising and a serious rationale for his campaign. What many people will look for is his audited financial report after the election to find out who is paying for his campaign.  He is losing ground rapidly with every all candidate forum he attends.  The bad news is that while his campaign is going downhill with the former MPP, he could collect as many as 6000 votes.

The other problem for the candidates is that usually less than a third of the potential voters in Babel bother to vote in municipal elections.  A somewhat higher turnout is expected with this election but that leaves the first and second place contenders splitting around 21000 votes.  One of these two contenders is going to win the election with a margin of probably less than 500 votes.

If there was ever an argument for runoff elections in Canada, this one makes the case.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

Municipal candidates are everywhere,

Can we arrange a bounty like for bear?

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It’s believed that Ford’s peaked too soon,

Is it polite if Smitherman, Ford did moon?

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Babel’s 2010 municipal election campaign is coming down to the wire.  All Ontario is going to the polls in October to elect mayors, reeves, councillors, school trustees and the various elected offices needed in each municipal area.  Babel is no exception.  Babel voters are looking at spirited contests for ten council seats and the mayor’s chair.  They are particularly interested in a colourful contest for mayor.  As it has taken shape, it looks somewhat like a bad remake of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

It is not just the fact that there are eight candidates for mayor.  Nor is it because the candidate for the role of Snow White role is neither female, nor likely to be pleased at being cast in a role in which he would have to wear a tiara and a sparkly white dress.  The reason for using the analogy is that the other seven candidates fit their roles as the seven dwarfs to a ‘T.’

Take ‘Happy’ for example.  While some people prefer Doc, my favourite dwarf has always been Happy.  How can anybody dislike a guy who is always smiling, cheerful and optimistic?  This candidate reminds us of the old joke about ‘show me a happy loser and I’ll show you a loser.’  You’ll recognize him when I tell you he was a former mayor and owns a hotel.  He is the ideal jovial Mr. Innkeeper.  The voters were certainly not impressed with his previous efforts as mayor of Babel.  He is cheerfully looking for redemption and will lose gracefully.

‘Doc’ on the other hand will not be a gracious loser.  From long political experience, it is easy to see that he is not in to win.  He cannot win.  The voters know it.  He knows it.  He is the incumbent mayor and he is playing out his one-act career.  We Babelites can only wish him well in retirement.

‘Sneezy’ is an easy role to play and the name fits the candidate whose name comes across as a sneeze.  We are not too sure why Sneezy is making the effort.  It seems, he wants to represent the average voter.  To make his point, he uses his website and all-candidate opportunities to tell voters how average he is.  That cannot be a winning formula in a municipality where voters are tired of having very average politicians.

According to Disney, ‘Grumpy’ is a funny character.  This is puzzling though when you see that this candidate is obviously in disagreement with someone who is not even running in this election.  Maybe Grumpy has not had time to update his website.  Maybe he will get around eventually to explaining why he is running for mayor.

‘Bashful’ is amusing.  Despite the rules against having election signs on display prior to the day that nominations close, Bashful has not been the least bit bashful about letting off a broadside against one of the nominated candidates with a sign on his property.  Since he seems to only be running against that one candidate, we are pleased to tell him that the candidate whom he is attacking is about as likely to win the mayoralty as Prime Minister Harper telling the nation that he is in favour of same-sex, polygamous marriage.

‘Dopey’ is a classic Disney character and no doubt many of us are fond of the little guy.  The only problem is that the candidate for mayor who best suits this character’s role is not that stupid.  He is wasting a lot of money on a campaign he cannot win.  He does not have a large number of supporters.  He does not even have very much voter support in the ward he has represented as a councillor.  Why he is running is a matter of conjecture but maybe it is best that he explain that himself.

‘Sleepy’ is the least understood of the Disney characters.  Narcolepsy is a serious, but luckily rare condition that can cause the afflicted person to suddenly fall into what appears to be a sleep state at inopportune times.  To be contrary, our Babel Sleepy has a tendency to wake up at inopportune times to fight past wars.  He calls himself a ‘tax fighter’ and promises the miracle of no tax increases.  Because of his negative attitude and angry style, he appeals to the people we refer to as the P-O voter.  If Sleepy got elected, Babel voters would really have something to be P-Oed about.

And that leaves Snow White, the star of our show.  While he is probably grimacing at the idea of wearing a dress full of crinolines and a tiara, his young daughter would be delighted.  If he wears the dress to her second birthday party, he will be the hit of the event.  And then, he can go on and win election as mayor.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

Mr. Tascona and his nephew Brown

Wish to control the keys to the town

Babel’d be the city wearing a frown.

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Tell us what you like or even what you might,

You’ll get more written for your own delight.

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Babel has proved itself a wonderful place to write about over the years.  As a newbie to Babel (six years and counting), there is no point in pretending any expertise on the why’s and wherefore’s of this unusual place.  Mind you, that does not preclude the need to wax eloquently on the foibles, failures and faults of Babel and its citizens and its leaders and to stand in awe of their unusual customs and mating rituals.

Politically, Babel is also most unusual.  The more one learns about the politicians here and how the voters react to them, one seriously wonders first if the drinking water has been properly tested for hallucinogens.  You would wonder but the tap water tastes so badly of minerals (and maybe something else) that one of the larger business opportunities in town is purveying filtered water.

Babel has had many political firsts.  While, at one time, the political electoral district covered a very large portion of Simcoe County, today, it is restricted to Babel itself.  With a population that now surpasses that of Prince Edward Island with its four Members of Parliament, Babel is only allowed to contribute one (rather useless) Member to that body.  Instead of quantity, Babel contributes oddity.

Babel was in the first electoral district east of the Manitoba border to ever elect a Reform candidate to the House of Commons.  The town goes with the flow.  In 1990, it elected its first NDP candidate to provincial office to join the Bob Rae provincial government.  In 1995, it elected a provincial Tory to join Premier Mike Harris’ ideology bound revolution.

Being contrariwise, Babel citizens make sure that if they choose a representative of one party to represent them at one level of government and then they choose a different party to represent them at the other.  This creates a form of musical chairs at the provincial and federal levels.

Since Babelites accept the fiction that federal and provincial political parties have nothing to do with municipal politics, the voters have been throwing mayors out of office after just one term to give another non-partisan a chance to embarrass the city.  The routine has been that budding politicians first get elected as councillor in a ward and then wait their chance to move up to a higher level.  If you are rejected at that level or eventually lose your federal or provincial office, you can always come back to the municipal arena.

What was alluded to in a daily comment recently is the strange situation in one of Babel’s municipal wards where the local Member of Parliament is trying to show his muscle (or something) to get a comely young ice skater elected to council.  It has been reported that the lady does not even live in the city but that does not seem to have deterred the intrepid Mr. Brown.  What we cannot figure out is why Mr. Brown’s executive assistant is running in the same ward for the same position.

And maybe, in the fullness of time, as they say, these things will be made clear to us.

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Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to   [email protected]

The media complain about the low voter interest,

It would be higher if the media gave it their best.

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Friends in Toronto are quite concerned,

With Ford as mayor, they will be burned.

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