As you can see, the majority of the 25 folks who participated in the poll see Gary Roberts' sixth place finish in last week's election surprise. So what happened? Any theories out there?
I've got nothing. I tried to figure out if there was some backlash from his opposition to the override, but that just doesn't seem to hold up. Mary Eaton takes a shot at the Newburyport Blog today.
I'm taking down last week's poll results tonight.
I'll post another poll about the Council later this week. I decided to hold off a bit. I think I'm sounding a little too preachy.
1 comment:
Tom-
Gary's loss caught me by surprise, which turned quickly to dismay. My opinion about him changed dramatically over the two years that we served together in the two branches of the Government; I saw Gary as neither a conservative or a liberal; he was, as I've described in my last several posts on my blog, one of the New Pragmatists.
My own assessment from the street is this. I think Gary was caught in the crossfire between three separate constituencies that overlapped in some places:
I think that there was a backlash among YES voters for his initial opposition to both the override and timing (he was never in dis- agreement that the schools were underfunded, he wanted more information supporting that argument than was provided to him by the SC in our haste to get the Override on the ballot). I worked very hard to convince many of my friends who supported the override that Mr. Jones and Mr. Roberts, despite their opposition to the Override, were with Mr. Connell and Mr. Earles the best friends we had on the Council, and that their insistence on accountability was actually a good thing.
I think that Gary had developed such a keen sense of where the excess was in the budget that a lot of sacred cows were threatened, so "word" went out that he should not be re-elected through at least one campaign that I know of;
I suspect there was also a third constituency that was unlikely to encourage votes for Gary based on who would chair what Committee on the next City Council.
It's a big loss for the City, especially at a time when creative, pragmatic change is actually possible. Gary was and will be a leading advocate of doing business more efficiently and holding people accountable; the City wins when those are the standards.
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