Well, the mayor's race is starting to heat up and a group of six is vying for the office. Who are these people anyway? As a public service, The Observer will provide a run down for you all.
Mike Burke is running. He has been involved in the Kansas City political scene for many years, including service on the City Council. His website is www.mikeburkeformayor.com.
Deb Hermann is running. She is on the City Council now, representing the Northland. Before her city council election, Ms. Hermann was involved in the PTA and Community Planning. Her website is www.debhermannforkansascity.com.
Leonard Jonas Hughes is running. He is the youngest of the candidates. He has been serving as one of Kansas City's representatives to the State House in Jeff City. He has a facebook page, link here.
Sly James is running. He's a lawyer, with his own firm. He has also had a lot of involvement in the community, including serving on the Economic Development Corporation in KC and is presently involved with working with enterprise zones. He doesn't have a formal candidate website, but his bio can be found here.
Jim Rowland is running for mayor. He also has been involved in KC politics for many years, including time on the city council, and working with the Sports Commission. His website is http://jimrowland.com/
The incumbent is Mark Funkhouser, elected in 2007. Mayor Funkhouser was elected after serving as the city's auditor. He works closely in the mayor's office with his wife Gloria Squitiro. He has a website that he uses for his lecture business that voters might find interesting, www.markfunkhouser.com. Other mayoral musings can be found on the city's website www.kcmo.org.
Kansas City's mayor race is nonpartisan--that means the candidates run without R and D behind their names. There will be a primary late February 2011. The top two vote getters will then run again for a vote March 22, 2011. There has already been lots of news with regard to the race, but most of it has been pretty "inside baseball", confined to blogs like Tony's Kansas City. With news of Deb Hermann's good polling numbers, watch for the mayor's race to start hitting the mainstream media sources on a more regular basis.
(Pictures from the various websites, except the last, which is from the Wall Street Journal)
6 comments:
You misspelled Squitiro's last name. The website you provided is for his speaking business, not his campaign.
Hughe's middle name is Jonas, no reason it should be in quotation marks.
Also, work on your grammar and punctuation. Commas go inside quotation marks for example.
This is just lazy:
"Watch now, with news of Deb Hermann's good polling numbers, for the mayor's race to start hitting more mainstream media sources on a more regular basis."
Obviously you started writing and just said "screw it" when you realized you botched the sentence. It's an easy fix: "With news of Deb Hermann's good polling numbers, watch for the mayor's race to start hitting more mainstream media sources on a more regular basis."
Anony--
Always good to have a critic--thanks for dropping by! Yeah, I'll clean that up a bit. I was trying to get the layout right, and may not have been as careful of the writing as I usually am. I noticed my misspelling of KC's First Lady's name after I left my internet access and looked at the post with my BlackBerry.
As to the Jonas, I've seen it both ways, and I wasn't sure which was correct. I should have gone with the way it was on his Facebook page.
Yeah, that's Funky's speaker site, but I think it gives insight into the mayor that folks might find important. I can label it as such, the way I did Mr. James' law firm page.
R Man--is that you? You can sign your critiques--I won't flame you.
Thx, T.O.
Dear The Observer,
My gracious! Someone got out of English class early.
LOL,
Ann T.
Sly James don't have a campaign site yet, but he started Together KC. Some fairly interesting discussions there.
First what a great site, I wasn't sure who was running. Thanks for the info.
Now I have to laugh, with a picture like that shouldn't Funkhouser's say we're running for mayor again?
But there a few questions i'd like to see all of these poeple address.
First: What do you intend to do about the prostitution problem in part's of the city? There was some bunk a while back about some "soap and soda" junk that took up a lot of time but seem's to have fizzled out. Do any of these poeple have the gut's to uphold the state statute and call our county prosecutor to task for not enforcing the law? If you've never lived with a prostitute blatantly standing in front of your house flagging down cars, you can't relate. But until you've had a total stranger pull in your driveway and ask your husband how much you won't be as outraged as i am. And please don't tell me again to think about where i live. I live where I can afford to pay my bills.
Second: What will be the status of more wasted grant money for "Aim For Peace?" They got 400 grand in the last budget. From what I've seen that was wasted. As a resident of this city who lived next door to the site of an as yet unsolved double murder, I can tell you Aim For Peace is a waste. We lived in fear for day's as the family and friends of the victims shouted around their yard and about the time it died down here came Aim For Peace with their marchers and signs walking up and down chanting and stirred it all up again. Surely could have been better spent by the police department to put more officers back to work (hence cutting response time) and to Neighborhood Preservation for the Abatement program. They do so much to pick up behind the people who just don't care where they dump stuff.
I'm just curious. But their answers would be a big thing in deciding my vote.
Try living north of the river where there is no "aim for peace" actually we get nothing. Response time from the police is worse than south of the river, we can't even get sidewalks or parks. All of the tax money that the police departments get apparently does not go to enforcing any laws in the northland. 76th St. is a race way and I have NEVER seen the police doing enforcement on it. There are children in our neighborhoods too, but apparently they are not as important as the south of the river children. We just lack the gun fire and all the craziness.
The mayoral candidates are going to say what they can to make you vote for them but they will not live up to their promises. They are politicians. Anonymous you can't always blame the Police, when the prosecutors won't file charges on the prostitutes or the Judges give them Probation for the 98th time, people must vote better Judges in and demand that prosecutors do their job.
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