Mayoral Debate
I'll get back to my nugget articles on each of the candidates this week. But I caught the mayoral debate today, and figure I would add my impressions of it to my thought train.
Mostly the debate just reinforced my prejudices. Nutter impressed me. Knox didn't. However I did have my opinion altered slightly. Once again, Brady performed better than my previous belief about him. Fattah's stock also rose. Evans disappointed me.
Overall I think Nutter did the best. He didn't bobble anything; he was steady, coherent and measured throughout the entire debate. He had the most concrete plans and suggestions. They were concrete, but I didn't disagree with them complete. I'm not sure his martial law plan is a good one, but it was the most concrete plan put forward. I also like that he said the ballsy-est thing in the debate. The exact quote was :
"296 black men were killed in the city last year. If the Ku Klux Klan came in and killed 296 men we'd see a different kind of action going on in Philadelphia right now."
- Quote Taken from "The Next Mayor Blog"
It might have been practiced, but no one else said anything quite as bold.
On a side note, can someone get Nutter a puppy or something? He seems to constantly look like his dog was put to sleep earlier that day.
Fattah also did well. I saw him as having a higher delta between his highs and lows than the other candidates. His closing was incoherent. For the most of the rest of it, he was very good, but have the occasional vague bullshit answer. He had the second most impressive statement in my mind, and the most common sense to boot. He suggested that to help reduce gun related violence, we should encourage the D.A. to give out plea deals to people who give up illegal gun dealer information. It's simple, common sense, and completely doable.
Brady did a couple things I liked. His closing was at the first glance very emotional, but vague. But as I thought about it, he was pointing to a result of "a safer Philadelphia" instead of just saying how to get there. He also took the time to defend all of the other candidates from Knox's bashing of insiders, which might have been showmanship but if it was, then I bought it. On closer inspection, he seems to be a bit long on the emotional appeal, short on the concrete ideas.
Evans harped on two things:
- Philadelphia should be one of the safest big cities in the country
- All good things could be accomplished through leadership at the top.
I assume that he thinks this person should be him. He really didn't say that much to convince me of that.
Knox was incoherent throughout the debate. There was this whole question about him forgiving a "loan" that he lent to his campaign. It was a confusing, weird question. It resulted in a rambling confusing answer. His one bright moment was when he was asked about the airport leasing option and gave the answer that there was a limit of 5 airports that the federal government would allow to be leased; only one of them could be a hub, and Chicago has already petitioned. Additionally the proposed profits would have to be shared with the airlines. Great! For one moment Tom Knox woke up and answered a question. The rest of the time, he was pretty much a zombie.
If I had to go just on the debate; it would be Fattah or Nutter. My brain says Nutter, my heart says Fattah.
I'll add it to the rest of my information, and come up with a decision later. If you want to watch the debate it's available on the 3 CBS website.
Comments
Posted by: bhueglin at May 8, 2007 1:00 PM