Thursday, September 16, 2010

Worlds Collide

I used to really enjoy writing about Nicaragua because I felt like I was sharing new and (at least to me) interesting knowledge about something very few of my readers knew much about. Now I live in DC and a quite a few of the people who read this live here too, or used to, or probably know something about it. But I'm going to write about it anyway because I find this city fascinating and there was a lot that I didn't know about it till I lived here and I'm sure much more that I'll learn about it in the future.

That said, the primaries for the mayoral election were on Tuesday. There might as well not even be another election in November because DC is so overwhelmingly Democrat that whoever wins the Democratic primary is basically the new mayor. In fact, I don't even know if there is a Republican candidate, although I'm sure there is one, let alone his or her name. Although most people polled thought that the present mayor, Adrian Fenty, did a good job in the last four years, the challenger, Vince Gray, won the primary and Fenty has conceded.

So for some reason, Tim Pawlenty - the governor of my dear state of Minnesota & a probable 2012 Republican contender for the presidency - chose this as an issue he should weigh in on?! I was surprised to see this article this morning in the Huffington Post with T. Paw's comments on Fenty losing the primary! I do enjoy when my worlds find new and strange ways to collide, but really?? Personally I enjoyed this line: "Pawlenty has proven to be quite adept at finding the epicenter of the spotlight of hot-button policy debates."

(If you don't want to read the article, the policy debate in question is the firing of a bunch of DC public school teachers by the chancellor of schools who Fenty brought in and backed up so the teacher's unions backed Gray & probably played a role in the demise of Fenty as mayor.)

Here ends Lesson One in DC politics. Stay tuned for someday in the future when I'll inevitably rant about the fact that DC does not have a vote in either the House or the Senate and why it's a big political uphill battle the change that.

1 comment:

Laura said...

They deserved to be fired!!!! PLEASE!

P.S. Love the new blog layout!

xoxo