I voted Republican yesterday!

Well, for Westlake, OH Mayor, anyway...

The incumbent Republican has been the mayor for over 20 years and has taken us from cornfields to model city. Low taxes, great city services, new development WITHOUT abatements, great schools...plus, we're the only suburb in Ohio to have a AAA credit rating from all three rating organizations.

The Dem challenger (endorsed by the Ohio Democratic Party who will, incidentally, never get another penny of mine) has run for office in neighboring cities in the past and lost repeatedly. He ran the sleaziest campaign I've ever seen in local politics, using misrepresentations, half-truths and outright lies in an attempt to win.

The incumbent trounced him by 45 points :)


While I nearly always vote for the Democrat, sometimes the Republican IS the better candidate.

The incumbent is a great mayor. That's kinda my point.

The people at work DID have some fun with it, in light of our past political conversations, though...

abortion or gay marriage or intelligent design. How many Republican voters can say that?

I got to vote for the man on his record, not what he might do to gay rights or abortion. Makes the decision SO much simpler.

That is how we got in this pickle in the first place. You can't corrupt a national election without help from local officials.

That was a corrupt election. If a Dem is corrupted you have to have a contested primary and remove that jerk in the primary so you have a good Dem running in the general election. The more Repukes that win local elections, the more repukes counting ballots and controlling vote totals.

I think Bush DID legitimately beat Kerry in Ohio.

That said, I'm not willing to sacrifice my home city on the chance that somebody may someday attempt to illegally influence an election, especially when I have no reason to believe that the Repub in question is basically corrupt.

You must open your eyes. Diebold assured a victory for Bush. Wake up!

It's not a matter of being "poorly informed". I've simply reached a different conclusion than you.

It's not an issue in this case, anyway.

It's not who votes that matters its who counts the votes.

I don't believe that EVERY Republican tampers with elections.

I certainly have no reason to believe that THIS one does.

Therefore, I'll vote for the qualified Republican over the unqualified Democrat.

based on a lack of facts !....again, wake up!

...please don't suggest that I need to "wake up".

We're both (I'm assuming) intelligent adults. We've both seen the evidence. We've reached different conclusions. I'm not accusing you of faulty decision-making, I realize that some people may see events differently. Please do me the same courtesy.

the democrats love demonizing people for voting their conscience....instead of offering up better choices. I probably would have refrained from pulling any lever....more power to ya.

I voted for a repub once. He was the insurance commissioner. Good man and did a good job. Didn't even have to hold my nose.

Sometimes the Republican is actually doing a great job and the Democrat is a weasel. Not a common occurrance, maybe, but it DOES happen. It's for that reason I can't consider myself a straight-ticket voter.

it's whoever the better candidate is

It's much easier to vote for the candidate based on qualifications when national issues aren't a concern.

If it wasn't about national party platforms repukes wouldn't fall in line with their party leaders right wrong or indifferent. That's where all the bushbots and neocon zombies come from. As long as Dems remain 5 fingers they can never make a fist.

Sometimes voting for a repuke is a good thing. When you have no choice and it screws up their primary.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=399980

Don't forget you have to hope that the lesser candidate has a good supporting cast (if a dem) and vote for that candidate anyway because executive positions such as mayor control and or influence appointments. If the supporting cast is poor then you have to exert activist pressure on the idiot.

Chairmanships are controlled by the number of legislative seats so even I would vote for Joe Liberman or Zig Zag Zell Miller types if I had to in order for Dems to hold a majority. You never vote against a Dem for a legislative seat.

Above all remember local elections determine national elections. The only way you can get cooperation to corrupt an election is through the local officials that have influence on how their election is conducted and who has access to poll data.

He tried to sell himself by promising to lower taxes even though our taxes are already some of the lowest in the county and the rating agencies confirmed in writing that they'd lower our credit rating if we cut taxes. Westlake has worked hard for 20 years to become what it is by following a very metered course of growth and spending. This guy wanted to sacrifice that stability for a few hundred dollars of property tax relief.

He wasn't just the "lesser candidate", he was a danger to the prosperity of the city.

I had to vote for a Republican in order to get a sleazy Dem out of City Council. The dem supported the use of eminent domain to take a family's land in order to build an unneeded golf course and rec center. She and her pals eventually wasted at least $7 million of our money fighting for this golf course (which was located OUTSIDE of the town) when the city itself is failing miserably (drug murders, no good recreation in town, etc.). I think we finally got just about all of them out.

On the brighter side, I think the Dem candidate I voted for the same position (I got to pick two) got more votes than the Repub I voted for.

If you could get the Dem out in the general election, why not do it during the primary to get a better Dem for the general?

Local elections win national elections.

:)

One Democrat ran against the incumbent Republican.

and the Saha debacle

City Council screwed up royally, and now they're paying for it.

rethug.

With that said. I can understand why you did. I just don't know if I can.

It would have to be like Jeffery Dahmer as a Dem for me to vote Rethug.

To me, though, this Dem WAS like Dahmer.

I bought a house in this city for the very things he was trying to change. It would have been a damn shame to have another city fall on hard times because of inept management, especially when things were so good.

I like to think I hold Dems to the same standard as Repubs. If you're a liar and an idiot you don't deserve my vote, regardless of your political affiliation.

get better candidates than that.

He has in the past. It's hard to beat somebody who's doing a great job. Most candidates won't run against a really strong incumbent (at least in local politics).

I lived in Kansas for a while and found myself voting for Republican Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum every single time. By today's standards she would be considered a screaming liberal. I never, ever regretted those votes which is why I kept on voting for her. Interestingly, she is now married to another noted progressive Republican former Senator, Howard Baker from Tennessee. If we had more Republicans in congress like those two we wouldn't have the problems we have today.

The good republicans aren't doing squat to stop the bad ones. They just fall in line like the good bush bots they are.

Neither Baker nor Kassebaum have been in Congress for years, so my defense of their political careers has precisely no relevance to the war in Iraq. Your comment in this context is a non sequitor.

However, since you raise the topic of Iraq...

The public needs to start holding the Republicans accountable. I imagine if such a thing actually happened, we might see some of them bolting from the ChimpCo agenda. We just do not yet know what is going to happen in the next few weeks. With ChimpCo being labelled a failure and with the election yesterday, we may see some real Republicans showing their faces again. Instead of questioning their previous motives, we should applaud their newfound wisdom.

and always for the republican that will give the dems the least resistence in the general election.

Mostly on...

And I can tell you this, Clough needed a wake up call...

The city was planned out decades ago, my step father was part of the group of civic leaders who mapped out a zoning plan for the city that has kept taxes lower than any other suburb in Cuyahoga County...

And Clough was suffering from a major case of Hubris...

I have to tell you though, when I ran for State Senate back in 1996, Mayor Clough was gracious and polite and introduced me around...

He also endorsed Jimmy Dimora for county commissioner back in 1998 when no other republican would take a stand for JD even when the republicans were straddled with a perennial also ran...

But I voted for O'Malley...

Simply because Hizzhonor needed to know there were people out there who didn;t like some of the shenanigans he has pulled off over the years...

Question, is it not okay to run a sleazy campaign if the person who is in office is running government in a sleazy manner?

I'm not trying to paint Clough as a saint and I think it's a good thing that he's been given a real reason to clean up his act a bit.

However, O'Malley (IMO) certainly didn't have the answers and proved that he was even LESS suited for the office by the type of campaign he ran. Frankly, the outrageousness of his campaign literature shocked me.

Answer: No, it's still not O.K. to run a sleazy campaign. I took personal offense that a Democrat would stoop so low and it made me even more determined to see him lose. That said, you have to admit that Westlake is doing a LOT of things right. Only part of that is due to Clough, but I'll take his ego and "shenanigans" over incompetence and sleazy lies.


That came off a bit harsh...I'm still a little worked up from the campaign. It's certainly not directed at you personally.

:hi:

You have to look at the track record (if there is one) and the platform to decide. New York kept Bloomberg, after all.

Look at Minnesota--we elected a "Democratic" mayor and just booted him out last night after discovering he was a DINO. I bet if he had won re-election he would have switched parties--just like Norm Coleman did.

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Care to slow down a bit and try to explain why this thread distresses you so?

But I agree with 100%

Stick to you guns!

We want good government. Sometimes, that comes in the form of a Republican. I was actually glad that this situation came up because it reminded me of my more youthful, optimistic goal - vote for the best person for the job.

Yes, I realize that there's a war being fought on a national basis and I'm all for putting Democrats in positions of power. However, I'd lost sight of the fact that "winning" means nothing if it doesn't result in good government. This brought me back to that.

if you can't argue both sides of the argument....then you can't understand the argument.

You have demonstrated depth with your response.
Sorry if I seemed to overreact....
But we are in dire need of saving this country....at a national level.

Rush Limbaugh and other scum bags have decided....and have worked...specifically...a means to gain control of the unsuspected....

The neocons (please research this) have decided specifically to co opt the Republican party at a national level because they were fair bait.

It is part of an insidious pyramid scheme to make you and me tread water while they bathe in profits.