Thoughts on the Election

Here are the results from the primary election for West Bend School Board.

Kathy Van Eerden - 1386 - 21.69%
Lynn Corazzi - 1379 - 21.58%
Randy Marquardt - 1339 - 20.96%
David Weigand - 1326 - 20.75%

Doug Ziegler - 652 - 10.21%
Douglas Rakowski - 173 - 2.71%
Carl W. Knepel - 76 - 1.19%
Bart Williams - 47 - 0.74%
Write-in Votes - 11 - 0.17%

The top four advance to the general election.  Few thoughts…

- Turnout was horrible, but that’s pretty typical for a February primary election.

- Only 60 votes separate the top four candidates.  It’s very close.

- For the general election, I think it’s safe to bet that most of Ziegler’s, Rakowski’s, and Williams’ votes will go to Marquardt and Weigand - minus their family and friends who voted for them but don’t agree with them politically. 

- The good news is that the voters have a very clear choice in April. 

- I expect that it will get nasty before the election.  Look for the same folks who organized for the referenda and levy increase to organize again.  The teachers’ union will pull out the stops to get the incumbents reelected. 

- As usual with these kind of elections, turnout will be key.  We’ll have to see if any other races in the district heat up that might drive turnout (like West Bend’s 3rd Aldermanic District). 

- I suspect that there’s no way that the teachers’ sign a new contract before the election.

Posted by Owen at 0812 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

Scenes From The Road

I’m sitting in the Newark airport at the moment on my way back home.  I spent the past few days in Providence, RI.  The business was fruitful, but it was also one of the more colorful trips I’ve taken in a while.  I ran into an unusually large number of characters.  Here’s a rundown:

- My cabbie from the airport to the hotel must have watched the Daytona race, because he sure drove like it. 

- We took the airport shuttle to dinner.  There was a drunk (or poorly medicated) woman who revealed the sordid mob history of the restaurant we were going to (Camille’s).  When she got out with the guy half her age at a theater, we all had a chuckle. 

- Our shuttle driver then proceeded to tell us that the woman “watched too much TV” and gave us his own version of the place’s history.  He is apparently related to everyone in town in some fashion or another. 

- This morning the cabbie insisted that he would have hit it big with his crime novel.  He had Grisham’s agent, but then Grisham hit it big and our poor cabbie was dumped in the trash heap.  He had a second chance and asked the publisher for a collaborator.  After a heated argument with the collaborator, the publisher “totally took his side” and he was dropped again. 

- Now I’m waiting for my plane and some guy just finished a very loud conversation on his cell phone.  Then he pulled out a guitar and started playing as if we all wanted to sit here and listen to him practice. 

I did get to see the sunrise behind Manhattan as our plane came into the airport soundbound down the right bank of the Hudson.  That was pretty cool.

Posted by Owen at 0806 hrs
Off-Duty