It's Finally Over...

To paraphrase former President Gerald Ford - “our long national nightmare is over”. Of course his context was completely different. He was talking about President Nixon and Watergate while I am talking about the 2012 election.

It seemed that this year’s election cycle went on forever and I am sure that the history books will not be too kind on the type of campaigns we saw nationally. It does not matter if you liked the outcome or not, our election process seems to need some improvements. I for one would like to see the candidates talk about what they want to do - not call their opponents names, lie about their records or accomplishments (or lack of), send others to do their dirty work and spend billions of dollars doing it.

Locally it was a long process as well. I can certainly attest to that. While the outcome was not what we had hoped for I remain very proud of the campaign we ran. It is always difficult to run against an incumbent and the Marina Mayor’s race was a perfect example. I wanted to stay on a positive course and talk about what I would do and not go “negative” and attack the Mayor on his record. That’s what we did, we stayed positive and rarely even mentioned the Mayor - rather we focused on the issues at hand and what I would do about them.

As a result, either the voters did not like the message or they paid little or no attention and decided to stay the course. So the Mayor was re-elected and I will go on about what I do professionally and philanthropically for our community. Clearly I am disappointed but I will move on.

Unfortunately, I do have a series of predictions as to what will happen in our community over the next couple of years but I will put them in an envelope and hope they do not come true. The good news is that I will likely spend a lot less time sitting in endless City Council meetings that seem to get nowhere and accomplish even less.

I do have one very strong recommendation for our Community. We need to insist on the Code of Ethics that the Civil Grand Jury recommended. Our City Council has been called out by the Grand Jury for its conduct and our citizens have complained as well. It’s time that the Council adopts a formal Code of Ethics as soon as possible. Such a document, and the commitment to follow it, will help to bring our community back together and put some faith back into the leadership of our community.

Finally, I will continue to write this column and the corresponding blog to keep you updated on the things within our Marina community because Marina Matters!

More later