Recently, candidates interested in running for office in Whitehall had to accumulate the signatures of 30 registered voters and turn them in by a certain date to be considered for the November ballot. From there a candidate’s signatures had to be verified by the Franklin County Board of Elections (FCBE). Once the required signatures were verified and all paperwork was properly filled out, the FCBE would certify your candidacy with a letter and certificate.

Let’s start with the stats. Here they are:

Most signatures gathered for a petition?   Councilman Wes Kantor with 64.

Candidates to get all their own signatures themselves?   Karen Conison, Kim Maggard, Gerald Dixon and Wes Kantor.

Out of 12 elected officials at City Hall and numerous political appointees in the city (Parks commission, Planning commission, etc., (most of them appointed by Mayor Maggard) remember: political appointees can be part of the quid pro quo element of ‘The Team’ too) the number of each that candidates got in their petitions:*
Kim Maggard:   Elected officials-11 Political appointees-5
Jim Graham:   Elected officials-11 Political appointees-7
Bob Bailey:   Elected officials-11 Political appointees-1
Karen Conison:   Elected officials-11 Political apptointees-1
Tom Potter:   Elected officials-11 Political appointees-2
Wes Kantor:   Elected officials-6 Political appointees-7
Gerald Dixon:   Elected officials-0 Political appointees-0

Tom Potter, who helmed the ‘Extend the Progress’ campaign to get three terms for elected officials into law, had help circulating petitions from Mayor Maggard (quid pro quo?), who got him 21 signatures and former Councilman and City Attorney Mike Shannon, who got him 16. Of his total 50 signatures, Mr. Potter only got 13 (11 of which were elected officials!). Doesn’t this guy know enough regular citizens to get his own signatures? It gives the appearance he’s getting into City Hall to work for the insiders and not the actual citizens who he would ostensibly be serving.

Bob Bailey also had help circulating his petitions from Ward 1 Councilman Chris Rodriguez, who got 14 signatures, and Auditor Dan Miller, who got 18. Bob was only able to pull in 8 signatures, 5 of which were elected officials! I say this is lazy on the candidate’s part. They want the job but not the work required to go and visit with the actual citizens?

Every official associated with City Hall bolstered their petition’s signatures with elected or politically appointed names: Over 50% of the Mayor’s required signatures were political insiders. Jim Graham, who only got 3 more signatures than needed, was bolstered by over half with 18 insider signatures. The least of the politically insider signatures accumulated by political insiders were Bob Bailey and Karen Conison with 12. (That’s still over a third) Tim Mouzon, who was running for at-Large council, got more signatures than the President of Council!

The least signatures of political insiders at City Hall:   Myself, Gerald Dixon, with zero**

Now, normally, the signatures on a petition are neither here nor there in regard to the politics of a campaign. One is simply gathering signatures of residents in order to run for office. Very American. This time though, given the recent manipulation by ‘The Team‘ at City Hall for a third term for them all and a comment on Facebook by a former councilperson mentioning how the status quo always get each other to sign their petitions, it struck me that this all was simply another example of that concern/complaint I’ve been making now for years: that this inter-donating, inter-efforts helping each other are what causes the political juggernaut of ‘The Family’ to exist, that which helps keep the same people in the status quo in place year after year after year. Thus then the reason I decided to write this post. The results of my look into the petitions reveal the interesting statistics above and that my oft-repeated assertion, which I’ve claimed about them now for years, has merit. Patterns matter.

WHITEHALL LEADER’S A TO Z MANIPULATION LEADING TO ISSUE 37 (THE TERM LIMITS QUESTION)

Here is a chart, below, I made to show you, graphically, how all this goes. The candidates are in bold and underlined, each with their own color and the elected officials who signed their petitions are underneath them.

As you can see, its the same old orgy of reciprocity at Whitehall City Hall: ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’, ‘we’re here for each other’, ‘to hell with the separation of powers set up by the Founding Fathers’. As I have said before; this sort of quid pro quo mutuality with each other creates a wall that is so impenetrable, only toadying go-alongs who sacrifice their independent voices to the juggernaut can ever penetrate it in elections. If you speak truth to power and want to serve the public, it is near impossible to get elected up against this Frankensteinian creation. They’ve got all the power of incumbencies and titles and the behemoth of ‘The Team‘ which they’ve assembled to roll right over any stand-up candidates who won’t tow the line of their demands of silence and allegiance, particularly as it relates to the immorality and duplicity of the ‘Team leader’, who uses this behemoth to help them into office.

As an example:

Here’s the manipulation meant to sway the voter to their benefit: Any candidate who isn’t any of them (like Gerald Dixon) WON’T move Whitehall forward. How does she KNOW this? Its absurd and done to get you to do what she wants you to do, plain and simply.

* Signatures on petitions were determined by visual approximation. If there were more political appointees on petitions, they passed my notice due to illegibility.

When there is this level of chumminess amongst elected officials, are they able to professionally distance themselves from favoritism and ‘debt’ to each other in order to work for the citizens with a clear eye and head, without bias? In order to bypass that dilemma in the first place, I recommend not ‘bonding’ with each other like this.

**Here is why there are zero political insiders on my petitions: I am trying to get elected to council as the citizen’s representative. As such, ethical propriety tells me that I should keep a certain level of professional distance between myself and those who serve in City Hall simply because intertwining too much in relations with elected officials can lead to levels of favoritism and ‘debt’ amongst each other. For me, I believe it is important to keep as much independence as a public servant as possible in order to most maximally serve the citizens one is there to serve in the first place. If I have any ‘debt’ or favoritism, I believe it should be to the public, not the public servants.