Well, I Met the Candidates.

Today, there was an informal meet the candidates gathering at the recreation center.  This gathering had an odd history.  It started as an announcement from Dan Samaria, seeming to suggest that all the candidates would be there.  Someone else to whom I was speaking thought Dan was arranging this only for himself.  What I heard was that the other candidates learned about it, and each of them backed out.  David Raymond seemed to say he and someone else had something to do with acting as go-betweens or mediators/negotiators, and finally, all five candidates showed up.

Manny Espinoza's table was first for me, because it was on my right, and closest when I walked in.  Manny and his wife were there, and they had by far the best food.  Very nicely catered.  Manny was interacting with his neighbors, and he was decked out in his Manny Espinoza for Commission tee shirt, which was comfortably faded from five years ago.  Manny was smiling and confident.  I asked him where he was all this time, since he has had no visibility at all in the neighborhood, and he explained that he had been too busy working to attend meetings, or anything else.  I pointed out that he wasn't too busy to run for office in 2013, but he stuck to his story.  He's offering to apply his accounting skills to looking over the Village's books, to find all the fat that no one else has found.  I tried to argue with him, but that was his position.

Jared and Nicole Susi were catercorner across the room.  They had nice food, too.  I've already seen Jared's offerings, as in this blog, and I didn't ask him anything further.  One woman in attendance said she didn't like Jared and Nicole, or she was mad at them, because Nicole referred to herself as a "Code NAZI," and said anyone who can't keep up with Code-required maintenance should move to a tent out in the country, and the woman believes it is Nicole who answers for Jared in places like Nextdoor.  She thinks Jared is sort of a fake candidate, and what we're really being offered is Nicole.  San Pellegrino water?  That's a bit rich for an event like this.  I don't drink water that expensive, so I didn't take one.

I didn't approach Dan Samaria, because I was too busy talking to other people, but Dan approached me.  He wanted either to correct me or to scold me for being concerned that Tracy Truppman would have undue influence over him.  Dan says he will reach his own conclusions in advance of meetings, and he won't change them, unless someone gives him an argument that makes better sense than what he came up with himself.

I didn't speak to Will Tudor.  I've watched him for two years, and I get it.  Chuck Ross has been telling me he thinks Will is faintly, if mostly imperceptibly, independent of Tracy, but I don't see it in any way that counts.  Dan Keys gave me a version of the same argument at the event today, but it's hard to tell when Dan is providing real insight, or when he's just being contrary.  He's always being contrary, and I can't tell when I should take him seriously.  He did give me one or two examples of what he considered Will's actual independence, but I didn't buy it.

The interesting, and prolonged, conversation was with Betsy Wise.  She's very crafty, and she's an excellent verbal dancer.  She's also very engaging.  She's charming and delightful.  Nothing she said made any sense, but it was a real pleasure to talk to her.  I really like her.  The question I kept asking her, which I think was the question Chuck asked her, and probably other people did, too, was how to juxtapose her complete absence from anything to do with the Village, with her sudden idea that it would be great if she were a Commissioner, and that she'd be a very good one.  She talked about her "skill set," which seemed mostly to do with "branding," and how she would quickly come to understand the issues and figure out how to be an effective Commissioner, essentially on the fly.  As we talked about it, and it seemed she saw what I meant by my concern, she said maybe I thought it was what she called "arrogant" for her to make this decision.  I reassured her that that's precisely what I was thinking, and that that was the word that came to my mind, too.  So here's what happens when Betsy Wise gets crafty in conversation.  She says, with what I guess is supposed to sound like humility, that she leaves it up to the voters to decide if she can be trusted with a seat at the Commission table, and she would fully accept it if they decided she couldn't.  Which is deeply disingenuous and manipulative, in a charming and self-deprecating way, since of course she would have to accept it.  She couldn't commandeer a seat at the Commission table, if she didn't win.  But my concern wasn't what would be her problem, if she didn't win.  It was what would be our problem, if she did.  The other thing I brought up in our conversation was the idea that she is a Truppman stooge, conscripted either by Tracy or by Jenny.  (The latter was the rumor I heard.)  Betsy assured me she had only spoken to Tracy twice before she decided to run, and to Jenny only twice before she decided.  She meant to reassure me that she didn't have long connections with them.  But it left the question as to why she would have had two conversations with each of them before she decided to run.  As she herself was trying to suggest, it's not like they were long time friends or acquaintances.  And she said she's only spoken to Tracy maybe a half dozen times since she declared.  I asked her how many Commission meetings she's attended since she declared, and stayed for the whole meeting.  As best I could figure out, it sounded like the answer was one.  Which is a little odd, since I don't commonly miss Commission meetings, and I've never seen her at any of them.  But maybe one of the few I missed was the one she attended.

So today didn't solve any problems.  Very nice cold cuts and cheeses, empanadas, and desserts, though.  And it was very sweet of Rosemary Wais to make decaf, just for me.