Ward 1 Convention Observations Part I

Ok, I know I'm a little late commenting on this but I figure better late than never.

Since I was running around behind the scenes for most of the convention I didn't get to observe a lot of what was going on. I did get to see all of the candidate speeches (most are still on YouTube), and was also there for the votes as well. To save time I'll only focus on my observations of the two remaining candidates, Susan Howitz Hanna and Kevin Reich. I realize Reich won the endorsement but to stay fair I think I should cover both.

I'll make this a two part entry, focusing on one candidate per post. I'll start off with Howitz Hanna.

Howitz Hanna had a very late entry into the race, and put herself at a severe disadvantage at the convention. Her 'campaign' obviously lacked any form of organization during the convention. I believe I saw 4-6 very oversized signs scattered throughout Edison. I think having a female candidate is great but to have this as your sole purpose for running doesn't make it the right reason.

Howitz Hanna's speech was one of the more interesting endorsing speeches I've seen. I'm not sure that I buy her explanation of, 'you're endorsing me,' as the real reason she was alone on the stage. I think the 9 votes on the first ballot back up my thinking as to the real reason she was up there alone. I'm usually a fan of the 'casual' speech, the kind where it seems the candidate is talking directly to the people. However, it's a real art form to be able to do that, and until somebody has that ability they need to stick to the tried and true method of writing things down, and practice, practice, practice.

During her speech, Howitz Hanna focused very heavily on building up Central Avenue. I agree that Central could use some help in the development arena but to focus only on this area is unfortunate. If you want to talk about potential business growth in NE there are so many other areas that can be lumped in with Central...Shoreham Yards, Johnson, Mid-City, the list goes on. I think she would have been better to just talk about creating growth in Ward 1 as a whole, rather than just on Central.

I did like her points on Wants vs Needs. The next council is going to come in with a serious budget crisis and will need to make some very tough, and unpopular decisions. It was apparent from Howitz Hanna's speech that she is willing to weigh her options, and make some of those tough decisions. I'd be interested to hear a lot more about this since in her speech she lacked a lot of real examples but if she has some cost saving ideas I'm open to hearing them.

I'll follow up with post-convention activities in a later post but this is about all I can offer from the actual convention since she sat for about 90% of it, giving me little to talk about other than her speech.