Mayoral race has positives, negatives

9/18/2005

Ten bite-size Lemmon Drops to nibble on while drawing inspiration from the expected 15,000 participants in today's Race for the Cure:

  • Jack Ford vs. Carty Finkbeiner. Well, at least the 2005 Toledo mayoral race should be as entertaining as the one four years ago, when Mr. Ford trounced gaffe-prone Ray Kest.

    That's the good news.

    The bad news? It has the potential to turn into a mean-spirited campaign, rivaling the rancor of the past two presidential elections.

    And these are two Democrats going at it.

    Mr. Ford, the incumbent, and Mr. Finkbeiner, his two-term predecessor, have different personalities and, therefore, led the city with different styles. They do have at least one thing in common, though, and that's pride in the job they did as mayor.

    Egos are going to get bruised over the next 51 days. Here's hoping they resist the temptation to make it personal.

  • Feel free to toss my clip-and-save prediction from June 19 -- Keith Wilkowski will be elected mayor in November -- in the nearest trash receptacle.

    If he runs again in 2009, though, I'll probably make the same prediction. My sense is that he wanted the job more than any other candidate.

  • OK, Rob Ludeman, you can wake up now. The primary is over. You finished fourth.

  • "Bad Carty" didn't make an appearance in the seven-candidate primary race, but I did find evidence of his existence in The Blade's electronic library. (I knew I wasn't imagining things!)

    From an article published on Sept. 19, 2000: A month after threatening eight of his top administrators with pay cuts for what he perceived as tardy actions, Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner has turned his wrath on city council.

    Wait a minute. With the catchy "Carty Gets Results" as his campaign slogan, the above paragraph may be an example of "Good Carty."

  • Someone may want to tell Eugene Sanders, the superintendent of Toledo Public Schools, that his wandering eye for other jobs is starting to get annoying. Just six weeks after saying on TV that he wasn't going anywhere, he was interviewing for a position overseeing charter schools in Detroit.

  • I counted 34 people on the TARTA bus I took to work on Thursday. The bus, with passengers ranging in age from roughly 13 to 80, was so crowded that I thought I was in a major city -- that is, a place where public transportation doesn't have the stigma that it does here.

  • An image that seemed like from an era gone by, as seen through the bus window as we rolled into downtown: A girl, probably 10 years old, using a pay phone. (Quick, when was the last time you used a pay phone?)

  • One of my memories (note I didn't say "favorite" memories) of Mr. Finkbeiner's time as mayor was the rampant construction of drugstores in the late 1990s. I don't know if it's an omen for his return to office, but a new drugstore at the corner of Reynolds Road and Heatherdowns Boulevard is nearing completion.

  • FEMA chief Michael Brown resigned on Monday? And to think, just 10 days earlier we read President Bush's lips: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

  • Please, God, before you process Opal Covey's solemn promise -- if she is not elected mayor of Toledo, "destruction will come, just as it did in New Orleans" -- please factor in that she received only 110 votes in the primary.