Saturday, October 03, 10 and 24 Coffee with Ward Three's Scott Bowling, 9:00am - 10:00am, Starbucks 1901 West Street
Jim Conley of Ward Five has a position paper on the tax cap petition. "The rationale behind my support of the Tax Cap is to limit the administration’s ability (now and for generations to come) to tax and spend at will. Certainly the last eight years, is a perfect example of why a Tax Cap is needed. Just last week, we sent 5 representatives of the City to Europe for a week because we were “nominated” for an award. Over time, the Tax Cap will not only help the current residents of our great City; but also our children and their children for years to come." Read the entire piece at tax-cap-position
I've scrutinized Dave Cordle's campaign rather harshly for a variety of reasons and poked fun at him for having a low-grade web-site that was never updated and for missing all but one or two of the primary season debates. Then I poked more fun at the upgraded web-site for hokey graphics and hard-to-read text. And lo and behold--he just changed his web-site again. That campaign can never seem to get its image and identity right--but the web-site finally is looking professional. Now Cordle has come through with a short video that almost makes up for the months of lack of visibility--I say almost....
This is a professionally-filmed, positive and upbeat production. It's full of good interviews with people providing testimony and helping us to get to know the man better, but you know I can't let him off that easily. It's long on bio and short on issues and vision. There's way too much showing him with Black youth at the Boys and Girls Center (over one minute of the 6:46 video) where he asks them some rather...uh...dull questions. Unintentionally it seems almost patronizing, but it does show a man that has been a dedicated supporter of that important local institution.
Distressingly, almost all the scenes are of downtown and City Dock, sign waving on Forest Drive, his backyard or at a county fire station. What about the rest of the city? It's nice to see how he is trying to be a "green" homeowner, but what are his environmental views and plans? He does speak of the importance of stormwater control, but what are his plans and visions for anything? There is nothing about our bus system, public housing, The Market House (but as an almost invisible backdrop in an interview), tourism, historic preservation, traffic congestion and parking. He has a moving interview with a domestic abuse victim but little to say about crime in town. So what was it all about? It is about how Dave is a hardworking, dedicated, reliable and decent family man who has served his country and his community. He is older and more experienced than the other mayoral candidates, but at the end when he tells us, "I'm an Annapolitan with a vision for the City of Annapolis" I had to ask, what is his vision? What he mainly tells us is that he favors the tax cap.
I know the Cordle campaign will scoff at my comments, but I have tried to be fair and I am posting the video here for everyone to see, but that's part and parcel of my goal to educate the voters. One last thing--when you get an interview with the former First Lady of Maryland, please spell her name correctly....it's Ehrlich, not Erlich.
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LISTEN TO CP Publisher Paul Foer on 1430WNAV at 8:15 every weekday morning.
Join us every Thursday morning, from 8-9 am for our Sip N' Blogs normally at ZU Coffee, 934 Bay Ridge Road, Annapolis, Maryland, in the Giant Shopping Center. Special guests will be:
Oct 8--Mat Silverman, Ward 5
Oct. 15--Josh Cohen
Oct 22--Chris Fox (at Sly Fox Pub)
Oct 29--Dave Cordle
Stop by on your way to work for your morning latte and meet other local activists. Zu now has a drive-through window!
Bay Daily on Hiatus
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Congratulations to Bay Daily creator, Tom Pelton, who has accepted a
position with another organization working to make the world a better
place. In his ab...
10 years ago
3 Comments:
Dave Cordle should pay Paul Foer for his advice. Well said by you and no one involved in his campaign should be upset with what you said. Mr. Cordle has plenty of time to improve on getting his message out and your advice should be useful.
My own experience with Mr. Cordle is that he, Ross Arnett, Fred Paone and Dick Israel went out of their way to help our community when we were having problems with gun fire almost every night. Mr. Cordle reached out to us while the Mayor only expended a digit of her hand to us.
Paul -
You are correct that Dave Cordle's vision for Annapolis has not come across on his website as well as it needs to. We are now working to change that. We Democratic, Independent and Republican volunteers on his campaign are hard working Annapolitans with full time jobs, kids in sports, PTA and other community responsibilities. We do campaign work because we believe that Dave's strengths and skills are what Annapolis desperately needs now.
Janet Norman
Janet Thank you for your note. Unfortunately, now is not the time to revamp the web-site or work to address how Dave Cordle's vision is not coming across clearly. The time to do that has been for the last six months. It is something I have consistently been urging the candidate to do here on Capital Punishment and have suggested to his supporters--hence the poor grades I meted out for this campaign each time I rated the primary campaigns for six months. We are all busy but that is no excuse.
My consistent message about rating campaign messages and effectiveness has been that we can learn a lot about how a potential mayor will run our city by how he or she runs their campaign. Dave started off by having an announcement where reporters were not even invited. He had a poor website that was ignored for many months and focused on his family roots and the replacement was hardly better. It has now been improved again. Above all else, each candidate needs to sell him or herself to we the people. I am bending over backwards to cover events and never hear a word from the Cordle campaign--but I wish I did. Thank you CP
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