A Possible Win For Everyone. Although "Not Your Father's Political Campaign."

Today was election day, and the results are in for the Commission of BP.

I am frankly pleased and proud to say that Mac Kennedy came in first, with far more votes (953) than the second place finisher.  Mac worked very hard on this campaign, he made very many contacts, and gave lots of Village residents a reason to vote for him.  Mac visited essentially every home in BP, and he left a door hanger.  Whenever he spotted anyone, he spoke to them.  There was little more he could have done.

The second place finisher was Art Gonzalez, with 657 votes.  And this is where things begin to be a little odd.  Art is in my opinion very solid, and I believe he has a lot to offer the Village and its Commission.  Art essentially didn't campaign.  I'm told -- I did not ask Art about this -- that he hired some political campaign organization to do things like finding places for him to place signs, of which he had many (although not as many as Mac).  On election day, and even though it was understood that most voters voted by mail or otherwise in advance, Art was essentially not at the polls.  Mac and I were, for about 12 hours.  Art came by for no more than literally a few minutes, said hello to me and Mac, and Judi Hamelburg, who was there off and on, and left.  Although I'm glad Art will be on the Commission, it's a bit of a mystery how he got so much support.

The third place finisher was Judi Hamelburg, with 635 votes.  It was never clear to me what constituted Judi's campaign.  She announced her candidacy, which clearly intrigued all her friends.  She somehow persuaded lots of people to allow her to put her campaign signs in their yards.  (It almost appears linearly that the number of yard signs in the Village correlates with the number of votes.  Pathetic, but seemingly true.)

So, that's our new Commission.  I don't know what to expect from Judi, and I frankly don't have tremendous confidence, but if she turns out to be a good, or good enough, Commissioner, the Village will be able to function, and we'll be OK.  Ginny O'Halpin and Dan Samaria are completely lost.  Mac Kennedy has wonderful qualities -- especially if he can stop trying to prove how good he is all the time -- and I expect good things from Art.  The question, then, is whether Judi will be able to recognize and follow Mac's and Art's lead, or whether she'll sink to an aimless and corrosive alliance with Ginny and Dan.  So, let's hope Judi will get hold of herself, or her friends will counsel her, and she'll be able to pay attention to the matters at hand, and participate in adaptive decision-making.

The rest of  the field -- the other three candidates -- don't really matter, but there are some interesting outcomes.  The other incumbent, Will Tudor, got 408 votes.  He, like Art and Judi, did not campaign, and he, also like Art and Judi, had a noteworthy number of yard signs.  (Is that what it's really about?  Are voters so uncritical and disinterested that they would vote for someone simply because they saw a lot of yard signs with that candidate's name on them?  I'm afraid it does appear so.)  And Will is an incumbent.  That fact often carries some weight with voters, even if it's sometimes the only fact they know about a candidate.  But apart from whatever procedure, or negotiation,  resulted in various people (some of whom can't or don't vote, and some of whom might not have been aware that Will's sign was in their yard) allowing Will's sign to exist in their yards, Will did no campaigning.  How this results in 408 votes is frankly beyond me.  And it's also worth noting that apart from the fact that Will is an incumbent, he has contributed absolutely nothing to the Commission or to the Village.  He kept quiet, always flew under the radar, and offered no initiatives.  He provided very reliable support for Tracy Truppman, when she was ravaging the Village, and his alleged fiscal prowess was not reflected in anything he did on the Commission.  He was so uncritical as to be entirely silent while large amounts of money were being wasted.  So again, 408 votes?  Curious.

I  myself received 394 votes.  I was the only candidate who campaigned in the usual sense of the concept.  I knocked on almost every door in the Village, waited long enough for people to answer the door, if they were home and disposed to answer their door, had sometimes extensive conversations with Village residents, and left a campaign flyer, with my home phone number on it, even if no one was home, or if no one answered.  There were many Village residents who told me that I was the only candidate to visit them (which was technically true, if you don't count Mac's very brief stopovers to leave a door hanger to have been a visit), "during COVID," and because of that fact alone, they would vote for me.  It's fair to say that I always asked them also to vote for Mac and Art, whom I considered the other most likely adaptive and productive prospective Commissioners, and perhaps they did.  But I didn't place many yard signs.  (Hmm.)  I perhaps mistakenly -- Mac has told me it was a mistake -- did not consider asking people if I could place a sign in their yards to be a high priority.  And it does, as I have already said, appear that signs=votes.  So maybe I sabotaged my own campaign.  And of course, I do have a personal style that is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea.  So maybe there were a significant number of votes I couldn't have gotten no matter what I did.

What's most curious of all is William Abreu's accomplishment.  He scored 300 votes.  William Abreu is entirely unknown in the Village.  He has no profile as a Village resident, and no relevant experience.  He did no campaigning of any kind.  The number of yard signs with his name on them is zero.   When I was getting ready to leave the polls tonight, shortly before they closed, Mac Kennedy asked me, and Dan Schneiger, how many votes we thought William would get.  Amazingly, Dan and I had essentially the same thought.  Dan thought 16, and I thought 15.  Mac thought 8.  I figured William would get his own and his wife's votes, and maybe a few from very close neighbors.  But 300?  It would be interesting to know who those 300 people are, and to ask each of them what it was about William Abreu and the existence of his name on the ballot, that led them to vote for him for Commissioner of their Village.

But the fact is, the outcome may be good all around.  For me, the number 1 goal was removing Will Tudor from the Commission.  His was destructive dead weight.  And that goal has been achieved.  Also, I offered myself as a Commissioner, but I'm very busy, and all other things being equal, being a Commissioner is not in itself an important ambition for me.  So, Tudor is out, and I don't have to be a Commissioner.  This may be a win-win situation.  Whether or not it's a win for the Village depends on Judi Hamelburg, and whether or not she can make of herself an adaptive Commissioner.  I hope she can.  We shall all see.