Scene Magazine - August 14, 2014

Scene Magazine

August 14 – 27 edition, 2014

The first ¾ of this story talks about how the media is placing it’s focus on the top 3 candidates and how a few more are stepping up to the plate.  It talks about how Joe Swan announced his candidacy, “but by the time the news conference was over, he was already facing a volley of criticism from opponents.”  It continues with reports about candidates breaking election rules, fines they may incur and more comments by the city auditors.  Just proving, time and again, that elections are more about throwing dirt on each other than getting messages across to the people.

The last five paragraphs focus on my campaign (the writer for Scene really enjoyed my campaign and he went out of his way to get my voice out there) and a new initiative that I was working on with some other candidates.  They read as follows…

Another issue related to electioneering in general came to the attention of mayoral candidate Jim Kogelheide, who observed that several other candidates – including Swan – had their signs placed in such a way that they violated three of the rules set out in the campaign’s official guidelines.

Kogelheide spoke to SCENE recently about his concerns, as well as a pending initiative that would see several of the lesser-known mayoral candidates in the election organize so their platforms are publicized in novel ways, perhaps as co-sponsored media events.

By adopting such a strategy, Kogelheide hopes to woo some of the spotlight away from the ‘three-horse-race’ narrative of Brown-Caranci-Swan, essentially opening up the election process to a more democratic allocation of airtime for all the candidates.

Only time will tell whether or not the idea flies.  Kogelheide even suggested that a news conference on the steps of city hall involving other lesser-known candidates might prove to be a platform for more meaningful engagement with the three front-runners.

Details provided were general at the time of the conversation with SCENE, but Kogelheide was optimistic that the public would be hearing about his collaboration with other candidates before long, “You can tell them something big is on the horizon,” he said.

A short time later, The Alliance was born…..

See... we proved that people with different ideas and opinions can work together!!!!