Except For Edgar, Who Cares Who Announces Now

Whoa! Someone must be reading to the bottom of my BLOGs, even my long ones.

Why just the other day in my BLOG “DRIC and Political Cynicism” I wrote:

• “So much for my dream of being PM one day. But who knows, Fate works in mysterious ways. Municipal politics can be so much more rewarding when you are solving real people's real problems. Perhaps being Mayor of some small town might not be so bad after all."

Then mere days later, this Henderson column:

• “There's plotting, pleading and polling aplenty”

In that column he makes out that the only serious Mayoral candidates could be Marra, Wisdom and Millson and then dimisses them all with this crack:

• “Who in their right mind, no matter how much union pressure is exerted upon them, would run against him under those circumstances and become, in effect, the CUPE revenge candidate?

Gee, a reader called me the Voice of CUPE during the strike and a Councillor said I should run for CUPE President.

And then, following in his Master's print, mini-Gord in his column still is trying to make CUPE the big campaign issue

• “The Big Fight being council's plan to contract out city hall's meter readers, garbage collection, recycling, and day care. It's all about CUPE jobs -- the same fight roiling the city for the past year.
  
  It's far, far from over. The entire region's political class is pretty much completely embroiled in this struggle right now. Some of them are growing quite anxious in their search for a candidate to take on Mayor Eddie Francis to "Keep our services public."
  
  The struggle will continue to dominate the municipal political scene until the last vote is cast in the election this fall.”

They are writing this crap for one reason only. They are doing it clearly because of MY BLOGs setting out the facts that they refuse to disclose about the strike. That Edgar (aka Eddie) and the hardliners LOST and cost citizens a huge fortune, forever!

If that ever got out to the Windsor public on a wide scale, Edgar could never run for dogcatcher, never mind Mayor again. He would have to pull a Mayor Miller of Toronto and announce that he was not running for “family reasons.”

All this silliness from Edgar:

• “They're pretty much unknowns. But Francis said he has the utmost respect for the three aspiring individuals, Anthony Brothers, Sam Sinjari and Rob Vinson, who've plunged into the mayoral race.
  
  "I give them a lot of credit. They've made a decision," said the mayor. Implicit in that, of course, is that he doesn't have much respect for those who expect him to make life easier for them by declaring his intentions.”

All of the flurry of Star stories and columns about who will run for Mayor and will Edgar run for Mayor or won’t he and when will he announce, April, May or now mid-June or until his 6 files are finished, whatever those files are. As if any of it matters.

• "There are six active files, very important to this city, that are now coming to the final stages and should be wrapped up in the next two months. What's driving me are those six files. I want to see them wrapped up before I make an announcement," said Francis.”

Wow, is Edgar ever that important!

But you know what it is don’t you, dear reader. Edgar, the E-Machine and the Star are terrified. There is one thing that chills all of their collective souls. They want to know, they have to know, what only one person in this City is going to do. In all modesty, that person is the BLOGMeister!

Wait, it cannot be. Perhaps they think I am going to run for Mayor! That has to be it. They want to know if I am going to do it and they are trying to force me to make an announcement prematurely. They are trying to shame me into it. What gall.

Or at the least, they want to know whom I am going to back and on whose campaign I am going to work. The way I helped get Eddie elected to my chagrin now. They know I would go for the jugular with a legacy of 7 years of failure as Edgar's legacy.

Yes, I know it is hard to believe that a mere lonely Blogger can cause that much concern in this City. But I do because I, and my Obliging Blogosphere colleagues, write a BLOG 5 days a week and sometimes on Sunday too pointing out what is wrong with the Francis Administration and how the City has suffered because of it! And how this City could do so much better with a real leader in charge.

It is because they know I am strategic, planning every move far in advance with military precision, grabbing opportunities when they make a mistake, no matter how small. And that frightens them. They are waiting for the hammer to fall and need time to be able to regroup when it does.

That is why STOPDRTP was so successful. We capitalized on the Hurst error re his Made in Windsor solution (Do you really think it was by co-incidence that our Group just happened to be set up at Devonshire Mall when the Hurst mistake hit the press, a few days before a key Council vote). He never recovered from it as we captured the spirit of the vast majority of Windsorites.

Why else the smears, the “obliging Blogosphere” crack, the nasty and childish name-calling without mentioning mine because all it would do would be to increase my readership. How else do you explain the Star deleting any reference to my Blogsite on the Star Forums even though such mention is not a violation of their Terms last time that I looked. It has even spread to the radio with the foolish pre-emptive strike by CKLW against Bloggers just before Edgar’s DRIC sellout announcement.

It’s laughable. Edgar is trying to set the agenda. He wants everybody to play his game according to his rules. As if I care what he wants or what his timetable is. I remember his nervousness when Hurst did not announce what he was going to do in his first campaign:

• “Don't wait for me. If you want my job, just get up and go for it. That's the advice Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis is throwing out to potential high-profile challengers who've been hiding in the weeds while anxiously awaiting word on whether he will seek a third term.”

Announce today and let the sycophants and lapdogs do the dirty work for him to try to destroy and discredit any opponent. Because he does not have the nerve to do it himself because it would provoke a counterattack, something he cannot handle.

Who wants Edgar's advice anyway.

I did like this quote that I read about the founder of Time Magazine:

• “Luce, the creator of Time, Life, Fortune and later of Sports Illustrated, was a media tycoon at a time when, as A. J. Liebling put it, freedom of the press belonged to the man who owned one (rather than, as now, to anyone with an Internet service provider), a time when a lone publisher could aspire to influence the course of world events. Luce used his mighty megaphone to promote leaders he admired, to paint a generally uplifting portrait of middle-class America and to advance the cause of American intervention in the world, up to and including an unrelenting passion for the misadventure in Vietnam. What he called “journalism of information with a purpose” was sometimes hard to distinguish from propaganda.”

That sounds so familiar to me regarding what the Editor of the Messenger said but in slightly different words:

• “We did things that newspapers can do to bring about change, positive change. I think we got a lot of results this year and this now validates the results we got."

Make them sweat because they are desperate. They want to know what I am thinking. They want to know what I am doing. They want to know whom I am supporting for which positions and what the kind of campaign will be. They need time, lots of time, to plot a defence to Edgar’s lack of success in everything. That is why they must have someone announce right away. And you know that the best defence will be very offensive:

• “In 2003, the last time Windsor had a serious mayoral race, then-councillors Bill Marra and Francis had entered the fray months before incumbent Mike Hurst announced at an emotional late September gathering in Dieppe Gardens that he wouldn't seek a fifth consecutive term.
  
  Nobody sat on the sidelines that year biting their nails and sniffing the wind while waiting to see what Hurst would do and what their odds were. They got in and started trading blows in one of Windsor's great political showdowns.
  
  In 2010, it's a different story. With a mere six months left until election day, there's plotting, pleading and polling aplenty, but little evidence that anyone of substance is prepared to throw caution to the wind and leap into a race that could mean going chin-to-chin with the current mayor.”

Who needs to go nose-to-nose with the Mayor just to boost the Star’s circulation? What is the necessity of announcing now, just as people are planting their gardens and before the summer holidays. At this time of year, no one has any interest in a municipal election campaign including a lot of the incumbents who have not announced yet if or where they are going to run.

If the Mayor is so brave, why hasn’t he told us what he is going to do! He does not dare. If he says that he will quit, he loses his power. If he says he will run, then he is a target.

This is a small town, 200,000 souls. It is not hard to get well-known quickly for good work. STOPDRTP of which I was General Counsel became a powerhouse in the City in a 2 month time-period resulting in Hurst leaving the mayoral job and getting the Star to drop DRTP support. As the Star said, no politician would ever get elected at the time supporting DRTP.

STOPDRTP defined issues not the Star or anyone else. Remember the debate over E C Row and the Montreal to Tijuana trucks. That was our coined expression and our issue to prevent the building of an upgraded E C Row for international trucks necessitiating the building of DRTP.

The Star---heck being slammed by them is a badge of courage in this City, a positive not something to be afraid about. Notwithstanding strong Star support, whatever happened to DRTP. They could not beat the people! Anti-Edgarites and anti-hardliners have nothing to fear from a newspaper that has lost its way in local politics.

So for me, pardon me why I chuckle at Gord's attempt to flush me out to see what I am going to do. I think I will offer him this advice as he gave to some of us in a Star column in 2004 after we met with him over a coffee as we began to feel that that Eddie might sell us out on the border file years ago:

• "Stay tuned
  
  Supporters of Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis say people who are growing impatient for action should kick back and enjoy the final three weeks of summer because the municipal universe is unfolding right on schedule...
  
  Stick around. The fun begins after Labour Day."

Oh and by the way, if you think I am being arrogant in this BLOG or bragging about my self-importance, I am not. I am realistic enough to know that I am not all that important in the scheme of things. However, it is just that Edgar and his allies believe that Edgar must micro-manage and control the world around him, including me. And you, dear reader.

As for me, I am just not going to let him do it. I will act when it is the appropriate time to do so. When Edgar makes another one of his huge blunders. I am sure that I will be given many opportunities over the next few months.