Thursday, May 3rd, 2007...6:34 am
We’ve Got Ourselves Some Primaries!
A quick perusal of the official list from the Clerk’s office shows Robert Reus has filed his paperwork to run in the Democratic primary for Ward 2 City Council. Reus has been a frequent speaker at Mayor and Council meetings and advocates a strong-mayor form of government.
Reus has until June 13th to get at least 384 signatures (he couldn’t have collected them before last week, when he filed his organization paperwork). It doesn’t sound so bad, until you try to do it. Take it from two time losing candidate Tedski.
On a quick drive across town takes us to Ken Green, who filed his organization paperwork the day after Regina Romero did last month. Green’s campaign chair is a fella named Charles Shipp. I don’t know much about the guy, except I found out that a “Charles Shipp” came in 329th in the Get Moving Tucson 10 Mile last year. He had a respectable time of 1 hour, 27 minutes.
I expect the Ward 1 contest between Regina Romero and Green to be a bit more interesting than the Ward 2 contest between Rodney Glassman and Reus. Green has some neighborhood backing and could do okay if he doesn’t base this campaign on making a crusade against the “Raúl Grijalva machine.” Pima county politics is littered with the corpses of candidates who thought that the loudmouths that promise to take down Grijalva every couple of years represented some viable political base. Even with some of the backing that Green has, he definitely has an uphill climb. Romero has some serious institutional backing, a good campaign manager, plus she’s a Latina running in a Democratic primary on the west side. Unless she trips up in a way I’m not sure she is even capable of, I give this race to Romero.
2 Comments
May 6th, 2007 at 10:42 am
There are 25 registered neighborhood associations in Ward 1, Tedski.
In reference to Green, what exactly do you mean by “some neighborhood backing”? Is that one neighborhood or two or what?
“Some neighborhood backing” in a Ward that stretches from Marana to the Tohono O’odam nation hardly constitutes support enough for an interesting race.
Have you thought of asking the candidates in Ward 1 how many petition signatures they have gotten toward their 384 needed to put their name on the ballot or how many City of Tucson resident donations they have received toward their need of 200 individual donations of $10 or more to qualify for City clean election matching funds?
How would you or any of us know whether or not Ward 1’s primary will be an interesting race if we don’t know which of the candidates will qualify for the ballot or qualify for matching funds?
If you ask the candidates these questions, perhaps your stature as a blogger will encourage them to respond to your research and we’ll all know a little more about the race outside of your opinion.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Go Green! He’s president of a ward1 neighborhood association. That shows responsibility and leadership. I met him yesterday and he was very responsive to my questions.
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