Bloggin’ on the Edge

Posted by Scott Spielman at 3:00 AM | Comments

Three of us sat across from a single well-dressed individual on Thursday and Friday.

Pens poised on notebooks, bottles of water nearby, we were ready to begin.

The scene might not mean much to the average reader, but it’s an obvious sign for us here at The Journal Newspapers: the political season is about to begin.

Again.

These off years are actually more interesting to me than the ones dominated by state and federal races. The candidates we meet are the ones we’re most likely to run into or talk to on a daily basis—and that goes for residents, too. They’re usually more intimate kinds of elections, although they sometimes fall prey to some of the same tactics the major parties play in regional contests.

It’s early in the process and we haven’t talked to too many candidates yet, but I like what I’ve seen so far. We’ve had some younger candidates coming in, which I always appreciate, and an overlying theme from newcomers and incumbents both about why they got involved in politics—or want to get involved in politics—in the first place.

They wanted to contribute something besides criticism.

That’s always been a pet peeve of mine, people who are the first to complain but the last to act.

I understand that just plain criticism has its role in government, local, state and federal. You don’t always have to have a plan of action when you point out something that’s going wrong. You don’t have to solve a problem that you see. Sometimes it’s enough just to identify it and let the people in charge take care of it.

I’ve always appreciated people, though, who take it to the next step. The ones that have done their homework and propose a solution to the problem—even if it’s a far-fetched one or something that won’t, for one reason or another, work in any given community. It shows that the thought process doesn’t stop at the identification of the complaint or acknowledgment of the issue and the promise of further study.

There will be plenty of interesting—and crowded—elections this year. In Inkster, there are several contested races. Westland is always a little hairy. The election in Wayne may be a yawner, but you never know. We won’t know the details of the Northville City Council race until the end of summer, due to their deadlines for candidates, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some additional activity up there.

So, if three against one seems like an unfair advantage for a candidate interview, just remember this. We do it that way because history has shown us it’s the best way to do it. It helps us develop a more well-rounded endorsement of whomever we think is best for the job.

In that, we all seek the same thing, too: whether you’re young or old, incumbent or new, that you have the best interests of the community at heart.

Happy campaigning, everyone. We’ll talk soon.

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