Meet the new boss...

[fancycwabs]

Today was election day in Memphis. Not being a resident of the city proper, I couldn't vote in the mayoral election, but as I have to go there every day, the issues of crime and poverty and race relations affect me, and therefore I had a certain interest in the victor.

The victor, in this case, was the incumbent, Dr. W. W. Herenton, the man who shepherded Memphis into its present state of high crime, poor infrastructure, widespread unemployment, and continued racial tensions, whose primary motivations are to build stadiums and to ruin the schools. He wins with 57% of the voting population voting against him (plurality wins in Memphis, and we typically have six or seven candidates), and a victory speech where he talked about the value of loyalty and all the white people who were out to get him, complete with anecdotes about how he was booed on national television (he assumed it was because of the color of his skin, and not his record as mayor).

*Sigh* Four more years of this.

n.b. Racial tensions in Memphis began long before Herenton was mayor, and I'm certain he had no easy task running for mayor initially or running the city when he was first elected in 1991. Playing the race card sixteen years later, after having defeated another well-qualified black candidate, smacks of divisiveness.

Comments

[resk.livejournal.com]

And this entire time I thought you lived in Boston.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

derspatchel's a Bostonian, I'm a naturalized Memphian and a native Mobilian, although in marked contrast to Bob Dylan, I'm typically stuck inside of Memphis with the Mobile blues.

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

And by "Memphis", you mean "Akron," except with zero or (as in this past election) one other candidate(s) instead of the six or seven. And King Don has been mayor for about six years longer. I won't get into the poll worker and post office kerfluffles that went down this year, 'cause it just makes me so damn angry...

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

Oops. Make that four years longer.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

King Willie (strange that both of our mayors are called "King X") makes EVERYBODY angry. Then all of them who don't have day jobs (or politician day jobs) decide to run against him simultaneously, and he just laughs in his volcano lair. If they'd just unite into Voltron, they could maybe beat him.

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

Mecha Shiva! Mecha Shiva! Mecha Shiva! Mecha Shiva! Mecha Shiva!

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

You're gonna have to provide the beer to get the image of Carol Chumney sitting on Herman Morris' shoulders and waving their arms out of my head, my friend.

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

I thought I read about a guy running who claimed he was an alien. Was that for mayor or city council? Christ, if there were ever a city on earth that needed the intervention of an intergalactic race, it's Memphis.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Mongo ran for Mayor back in the '90s. He's older now, and more intrigued by MySpace than politics, I think.