Indy Endorsements

Adam,

Actually you will discover that, as time goes by, you and your peeers will become more knowledgable on the issues. Also, I've been through the process with the DTH when I was endorsed in 1992 so I know what it is like to discuss issues with students who are not from here and have limited knowledge of the history of many of the issues. Of course, the same could be said for some of the other endorsing organizations. I totally respect your participation in learning the craft of journalism. Keep it up. Lord knows we need a new generation of journalists that will cut through the corporate progaganda that passes for most news coverage in these dark days.

A couple of questions - did you know that the Lot 5 plans include underground parking and street level retail? You all gave kudos to Penny Rich (whom I like a lot and respect from our days on the OWASA Board together), for suggesting that these should be included.

Also, did you know that there exists no record of Matt Cz. particpaipating in town affairs in any council minutes or even voting in the last several elections? Fresh viewpoints are great, but when you endorse someone with no apparent record of engagement on town issues it would be useful for readers to learn of some experiences that prepare him to deal with the issues. In my opinion the section on him is vacuous. You quote him as saying that "political debate is skewed toward feel-good issues; he wants to tackle those but talk about others as well", yet give no examples. This is a meaningless statement without something to back it up.

Mark

By your standards then Mark, your own endorsement of Dan Coleman fails to recognize that among his platform issues are non-vehicular mobility and community relations. In your response to Adam, you imply that history trumps the present. Without a doubt, Dan Coleman has been an advocate for environmental protection, civil rights, and many other liberal values. But he has admitted to using his car to intimidate a woman, a community volunteer, two conditions that violate his own political platform.

While your loyalty in standing up for a political ally is admirable, it also sends out a message that if you haven't been in this community for 20 years, your opinions are invalid and your understanding is shallow. While I understand the intent of your sentiments, I also believe that sometimes the present speaks louder than the past.

Mark (Marcopoulos),

I have enormous respect for Mark Chilton. He knows that. Remind me, he'd been living in Chapel Hill as a student precisely how much longer than Adam before the good people of Chapel Hill decided that, as a student, he was knowledgeable enough to speak for them and about them...? Or am I wrong?

Mr. Marcopolis,

We in fact did know that Lot 5 was a mixed use development that had underground parking. We were impressed with the fact that Rich wanted to have seen more office spaces included in the plan, and less residential. One of the problems that Chapel Hill downtown retail faces is that because people are living in the town, but working in the RTP, in Durham, or in Raliegh and leaving town during the day, it dramatically affects the number of patrons who are frequenting downtown businesses, and by exchanging some of the residential space in favor of offices, it would be possible to draw businesses to set up shop in the downtown area, which would then draw more people to the downtown area, and thus there would be more consumers there.
We also know that the cost of the Lot 5 development to the taxpayers of Chapel Hill has skyrocketed since then, without any guarantee that this development will be successful. I would point out that every current council member, save Jim Ward, voted for the plan, dispite the burden it will place on town residents.
As for our endorsement of Czajkowski, we did know that this was his first real foray into town politics. It was one of the things that we as a board discussed during the course of our endorsement process, and I looked up his past voting record just to get confirmation of his past civic involvement. (He only voted in 2000 and 2004, in case anyone is wondering)
But the thing that you have to recognize is that everyone has to start sometime, he has just decided to jump in a little later than most. What I mean is that I am certain that you were not engaged and invested in town politics since the day you were born, but rather had something draw you in at some point in your life. Czajkowski just found the issues that drew him in later than you, and that should not be seen, in my opinion, as a mark against him.
As for our actual endorsement, I will concede the point that it was a little vague on our part. Much of that stems from the fact that we just don't have the space to cover point by point everything that we like or dislike about a particular candidate, so some degree of simplification is needed. In retrospect, it would have made for a stronger endorsement had we cut some of the excess out and actually deliniated examples, but like I said, it is tough to fit everything we want to say into that space.
As for the examples we were considering in that particular statement, the feel-good issues that Czajkowski was talking about encompassed many of the big time issues of the campaign: ending homelessness, protecting the environment, providing affordable housing for service sector workers, etc. These are issues that it are very difficult to come out against, so the dialogue on these issues is already scripted at the outset, the only slight variation being how to achieve these goals.
What we liked so much about Czajkowski is that he voiced the need to confront some of the glaring problems in Chapel Hill that no one in the race seemed to want to admit were problems, for example the state of Franklin Street.
The incumbents, when asked about Franklin, all tossed out a similar line about how Franklin Street is doing fine, some even went as far as to say it is thriving, and that there are only small things that need to be done to make it better. Well, as a student, I spend quite a bit of time on and around Franklin and the word that comes to mind when I am there is not thriving, it is more like declining.
Czajkowski has taken the revitalization of Franklin, something the incumbents didn't seem to want to touch, as one of the top priorities that the town needs to address, and to address quickly, and frankly we agree.
I hope that that example is suitable for you.

Please keep the questions coming, I certainly enjoy being able to clarify our position as much as possible.

Adam,

Thanks for the thoughtful clarifications and further explanation. It makes pretty good sense. You all should have printed what you just wrote.

Geoff- hold the apples and pass the oranges - Chilton ran for office for months and people had ample time to decide whether he was worth their vote. The DTH wrote about 500 words on four people and that's all we got.

By your standards then Mark, your own endorsement of Dan Coleman fails to recognize that among his platform issues are non-vehicular mobility and community relations. In your response to Adam, you imply that history trumps the present. Without a doubt, Dan Coleman has been an advocate for environmental protection, civil rights, and many other liberal values. But he has admitted to using his car to intimidate a woman, a community volunteer, two conditions that violate his own political platform.

While your loyalty in standing up for a political ally is admirable, it also sends out a message that if you haven't been in this community for 20 years, your opinions are invalid and your understanding is shallow. While I understand the intent of your sentiments, I also believe that sometimes the present speaks louder than the past.

I have been here for over 20 years and I agree with the quoted statement. I am appalled at the level of protection afforded Mr. Coleman by the OP insiders in light of the circumstances. The protection extends across the board to "the chosen" (many, as Will has pointed out, have not even participated online) and the ganged-up bashing of the non-chosen.

On the DTH topic, my experience is that on most things the DTH does a great job of reporting. It is more common to see the non-DTH media biased toward incumbent positions than the DTH (typically because the non-DTH media doesn't take the time to seek differing opinions and sometimes because of poor journalistic practices). Sometimes, though not recently, I have seen a DTH reporter mislead into adopting incorrect and unsupported statements of fact due to complexities that a reporter (student or not) with a longer local tenure would have had time to grasp. I think this could be resolved if the DTH reporters kept better long-term notes and contacts to pass on to new reporters and the reporters took advantage of those contacts (and not rely on a single contact, particularly repeatedly).

Knowing Dan, I think he's just as likely to lose his temper with a woman as he is with a man. He may have a short fuse, but I have no reason to think it has anything to do with gender.

It is nice to know that there is no discrimination when it comes to bullying and possibly assault. I am comforted.

Mark P.

Not sure exactly how you found some sense in Terri's extrapolations and free-forming off what I wrote. I don't know how she got the notion that I think "history trumps the present" or I said that "if you haven't been in this community for 20 years, your opinions are invalid and your understanding is shallow". I didn't say it and obviously don't believe it. I do agree that those notions are silly though so I guess we're on the same page there.

And I guess that the present may speak "louder" than the past - hell, it's got a big advantage. It's actually there. Incorporating history into our perspective takes a little more work.

Thanks Adam for providing some background. I am thrilled that you were able to look beyond the incumbents to choose some new folks with a new perspective and more than a willingness to make substantive change.

Mark M,

Hence my innate dislike of other people 'speaking' for candidates, by way of endorsements.

Let candidates speak for themselves. Let 'endorsing' organizations merely offer themselves as forums to present candidates to the people. And then let ordinary folk decide for themselves.

I really am unhappy with too much interference between people and those representing them. There's way too much room for subjectivity.

A propos of this earlier comment of mine in this thread:

Dropping my daughter off on the Duke campus for orchestra practice this morning, I noticed a new crop of street signs in Durham that say something like "STITH -- Right-Wing Republican -- Don't Be Fooled!" I'm curious to know what people think about that sort of sign.

It's like nothing I've ever seen in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, but I've only been here 9 years. Maybe some of our older-timers can chime in: has Chapel Hill/Carrboro ever seen this sort of overtly negative campaigning?

Overtly negative campaigning? Depends on how you want to define campaigning. If you mean public signs like the one you reference, I don't remember any. But I would say that Tom Jensen, Will Raymond, and Dan Coleman were overtly negative in their campaigning against Ed Harrison last year. I think Ruby, Tom, and Brian R have been overtly negative toward Will this year while Will has been overtly negative toward Bill.

Personally, I prefer the overt over the more insidious insinuations. But I believe Mark C was accusing me of insidious insinuations when I stated that Penny Rich has a stronger environmental record than a couple of the CH incumbents. Dan argued with me privately last year that he was simply stating fact about Ed. Will believes he is stating fact about Bill. But as we have seen those facts can be disputed even if they can't be proven to be false.

Does campaigning by blog enable more negative campaigning than public signs/advertising?

Does campaigning by blog enable more negative campaigning than public signs/advertising?

Yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that candidates who are unwelcome by the some of the primary participants of a blog (be it OP or STP) have been sniped, strawman-ed, and attacked beyond what should be a reasonable discussion on the issues themselves.

No, in that the campaign signs reach a broader audience of people who may not have sufficient background knowledge on a topic to know whether the negative signs are credible.

If a statement is true, I don't think it can be classified as negative campaigning. The sign about Stith is totally accurate and verifiable. He's the one who's been trying to slip into office as a humble crime fighter when he clearly is a point man for big business interests.