Bloggin’ on the Edge

Posted by Scott Spielman at 11:12 AM | Comments

Sometimes, the election season is called ‘the silly season.’

There are no shortage of reasons for that, as anyone who watches local, state or national politics can attest. In the journalism biz, it can tend to be a grind, because we always hear the finger-pointing that goes on during the campaign (prior to the finger-pointing that goes on AFTER the elections). There are always the ‘so-and-so is out there stealing my signs,’ complaints and all that.

Despite all that nonsense, I tend to like the campaign season. I have a healthy respect for anyone that runs for public office—as long as they’re doing it for the right reasons. I’m not too fond of those that are just looking for a job, a government pension, or are seat-hopping because there’s nothing else left for them. To me the right reasons are to make things better and in the current state of affairs, there’s a rather large window for that.

Anyway, in order to put some fun into the campaign season for the rest of us, we’re going to have an election afterglow, if you will, where we will hand out awards to candidates that we feel live up to who or what the award is named after. We’re still deciding exactly what those will be.

We do have an early candidate for the Crybaby of the Season Award, though. His name is Mario Fundarski and he’s running for state representative in the 16th District, which includes Inkster, Garden City and Dearborn Heights. He won’t come in for a candidate interview because he said he feels we marginalized his candidacy when he ran for the Westwood School Board earlier this year. Fundarski, who only moved into the district a relatively short time ago, faced two strong incumbents. We said they were a clear choice.

He didn’t like that. Oh well.

This gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about our endorsement process. Endorsements for one candidate are not attacks on others. We come into the interview with no preconceived notions—the fact that we cover such a wide area and it’s virtually impossible to know everyone running for office within it backs that up. We try to determine who would do the best job based on not just what they say in answer to our questions, but how they act when they say it. Is it staged? Off the cuff? Rehearsed? Genuine?

We don’t expect anyone to have all the answers. But ideas are nice.

So keep that in mind as your mailbox fills up with literature during the ‘silly season.’

Oh, and if anyone has any ideas for an award and who it should be named after, feel free to drop us a line. We’re open to suggestions.

And does anyone know the name of that game at Chuck E. Cheese, where the mole pops up and you have to whack it before it disappears? That could be a fun one….

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