CH City Council Elections-Now get to work!

And so we come to the close of the 2016 Election Process to find that the three incumbents on the ticket, Mayor Greg Kochuba, Joe Green, and Kenny Frenier all earned their reelections.  The new guy on the block, Mike “Picka” Cherry isn’t as new as some would think.  He has been around, and I think this is his third attempt to get on City Council.

Mike replaces Vice Mayor Diane Yates, who opted to step down from her council seat where she has stood for many years as an effective voice for the people of the city.  While we applaud her for the years she has spent trying to make the City a better place to live for everyone, her loss on council sets up the potential for a new face from within the community in Mike.

Greg, Joe, and Kenny have all been effective administrators to the public.  Greg, due to his financial background, is perhaps the most knowledgeable budget man in the city.  He has shown a steady hand in keeping council on point and working the sometimes squishy ground between the administration and the residents.

Joe Green is the consummate constituent’s candidate.  In my experience, there are few people in government who at heart have more concern for the individual voter.  He is not afraid to voice his opinion on subjects and is more than willing to take the best stance when there are “issues” between a council action and the people it affects—the citizenry.  If you run into a concern, be sure that Joe will be at your door at some point to see what can be done to ameliorate the problem.

Kenny Frenier has a very long relationship with the residents of city that dates back before his earliest days with the fire department.  I would venture to guess that of all council members, not one is more familiar with the lay of the city than Kenny.  He is an honest and straight forward kind of guy; with Kenny you get what you see and that’s a good thing.

We welcome you back and hope that you continue to lead in the same manner as you have in the past.  I am sure you will.

This election was more contentious than almost any I can remember in the near 30 years I have lived in this city.  We had a number of citizens who came out to try to grab one of the four council seats up for grabs.  These people need to be applauded:  Christy Palmer Archileti, David P. Hoopsick, Tricia L. Palmer, and L. P. "Buddy" Waskey IV.

The one thing I know about Colonial Heights politics is that if you really want to be part of the City Council you have to be willing to give it more than one shot.  For most people in the city, they hardly know who all these candidates are.  They wonder, as did many I am sure in this cycle, what these people are really running about?  Is it just one issue that inspired them to run for council, or are they truly concerned about the city and how it serves the community?

These results show very much the conservative nature of the city’s voting bloc.  Things are not bad in the city; there have been a few high-interest issues, but I believe the constituency understands what council is about and approves of how they are handling things.  The proof, as the saying goes, is in the pudding—or in this case the election.

Sometimes things don’t go the way one might want.  Certainly, those issues need to be brought to council’s attention; although I am sure they are already aware of most of the problems.  Come out to a city council meeting and see what goes on.  Take an interest in the community, find an area that concerns you and volunteer to help out.

It’s striking to me that one council matter was behind three of the five new comers coming out for the election.  And the truth of that is that council actually did a good job during the public hearing about City Code changes and parking vehicles in or on personal property.  The citizens spoke and council listened.  That’s how things need to be handled in any democratic process.

To everyone who participated in this election, speaking on behalf of the city’s 17,000 residents, owe you our thanks.  To those who managed to earn a seat on city council, we the people of Colonial Heights say, “Get to work.”

Not my President? Maybe you should vote then.

Here’s one final comment on the Presidential election.  In terms of winners and losers, it would appear that the Democratic Party is somewhat to blame for the outcome. There are many who would like to say otherwise, but the bare fact of the matter is that turnout, or the lack thereof, doomed Hillary Clinton’s attempt to replace President Barack Obama.

Yes, there were other issues, like FBI Director Comey’s reopening of the investigation into Hillary’s email issues. And the constant dripping of information from Wikileaks. But even with them, the truth of the matter is that Hillary was her own worst enemy.  She often stated that “setting up her own email server was a mistake and she would not do it again.”  But that she did so in the first place added to the negative perception that many people have of her. It certainly helped swing those final few undecided voters, but there were many other problems along the way.

For instance, Hillary was unable to get the kind of turnout she needed from the African-American voting block, which in the end killed her in Florida and in Pennsylvania.  Ironically, in both states she held a slight lead going into the final minutes of their respective elections.

In Florida, she had the lead coming out of the I-4 corridor, but it was nowhere near what she needed to secure the victory.  Most of the panhandle and western side of the state vote republican, and as things turned out that was enough to turn the state for President-elect Donald Trump.

In Pennsylvania the results were similar.  Hillary had a small lead with the eastern portion of the state already counted.  She easily won the Philadelphia area, a Democratic stronghold that determined how the state vote went for both President Barack Obama elections in 2008 and 2012.  As the vote tallies progressed toward Pittsburgh and the adjacent counties, where there was a huge turnout for Trump, it was enough to overcome the Philadelphia effect and turn the state to favor the Republicans.

But those two huge states were sort of put in the background as the AP declared Trump the winner in Wisconsin.  At that point, the Democratic party started to sweat a bit.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the whole pre-election stuff was trying to figure out how the polls, which seemed always to favor Hillary, could be so far off?  What was bothersome was the size of the crowds that would come out, and in some instances wait hours, for Trump to make a speech.  In Michigan in particular, the crowd waited for three hours as Trump was delayed in getting to the airport.  How is it that that kind of support didn’t show up in the polls?

Some of the post-election punditry is explaining how perhaps the polls counted too many Democrats or this or that.  It seems that perhaps the applied the wrong data about what made up the voting constituency.  The pollsters were using turnout results from 2012 and applying it to the data from this year.  But in the end, the turnout data for 2016 was a bit different.

Only two polls were even close:  the LA Times tracking poll and the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) tracking poll. All other polls got it wrong, by varying degrees.

As it turns out, the least likely person in the world nailed it.  Michael Moore called the race for Trump back during the primaries.  He noted that more republicans voted than democrats in the Michigan primaries.  In the end, he said this election amounted to the American people saying they had had enough with the political elites and voted to turn them out.  Of course, he used language to express this which isn’t appropriate for this blog, but you can easily Google it and see for yourself.

In the end, it was the late breaking independents and the lack of turnout for key Democratic voters that “done her in.”  Sure, there may have been other problems, but even so, you have to get the voters to come out.  The people that did turn out were coming to see Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, and Beyonce.  They really weren’t that interested in voting apparently.