Saturday, March 10, 2007

The View From The Cheap Seats BY Jerry Haferkamp

The View From The Cheap Seats

By Jerry Haferkamp

As our readers know, the First Capitol News investigates and informs. No other paper brings you the information you deserve. Therefore, I am going to disclose something that I’ve never told even my relatives. I am the real father of Anna Nichole Smith’s baby. Now that that’s settled, we can get on with local issues.

It was interesting to discover that Mayor York has exceeded John Gieseke in the amassing of campaign funds. This comes as no surprise to me as Mr. Gieseke is more interested in securing decent government than he is in securing wealth. After all, he is the only one giving up a good job if he wins the election. He obviously thinks your well being and mine is worth the sacrifice, or he wouldn’t run.

That brings up an assessment of statements by some council members that said that the mayoral salary needed to be higher to attract good candidates. Are they suggesting that a former mayor, the present mayor and a multi-term councilman aren’t “good candidates”? This just goes to show how wrong that hypothesis was and still is. I’m glad the salary was set at the level it was.

Mr. Gieseke should have to outspend the mayor since his campaign starts from “scratch”, but I doubt he will. The mayor conserved since she recycled old campaign signs. The bottom right of these signs have her former “paid for by’ marked out and a new name put on with what looks like magic marker. Since someone else paid for these signs during her last campaign, is it legal to say these signs were now paid for by someone different? She wouldn’t sell her old signs to her campaign and pocket the money, would she?

Mayor York obviously will need more campaign funding than Mr. Gieseke due to her basic tenet that elections go to the highest bidder. You tried to educate her in the fraud laced recall election but she may not have been a good student. You have the opportunity to show her once and for all that St. Charles is not for sale. Maybe this time she’ll listen.

Of course, that’s just the view from the cheap seats.
ttt