Eva Young wrote:
The other thing that defeated Cherryhomes was her
association with the "old guard" - the people who put
the city into debt - bit time.
Ms. Cherryhomes also honked off Northsiders by jacking people around
through her development dreams. One instance, though not the only one:
after Summit Academy/OIC on Plymouth had spent over a million bucks
turning a dead shopping center into a live school which teaches the
trades (electrician, plumber, carpenter, 49er, among other things),
Cherryhomes put forward the proposition that Summit could move down the
road a ways to accommodate her preferred development for the school's
location, even though it had lain fallow, so to speak, for years before
Summit moved in while Cherryhomes was in office.
For many and many a Northsider, Summit is access to the trades and union
wages, a big economic step up for people. Mess with an institution seen
as a big economic improvement mechanism at your own peril. Mr. Louis
King, CEO of Summit Academy, has all sorts of cred among the people in
the fifth ward who vote. King could command interest in defeating
Cherryhomes by supporting NJL's first campaign. He did so effectively.
Natalie's defeat had nothing to do with the "DFL
machine." Natalie Johnson Lee defeated Natalie
Johnson Lee. It was her failure to condemn the
incendiary "let's kill the house nigger" rhetoric of
Booker Hodges (husband of her assistant) that defeated
her.
I'd don't think it's entirely true that Hodges rhetoric brought NJL.
Hodges rhetoric is not new, nor is it worth paying a lot of attention
to. Making her responsible for commenting publicly about his rhetoric is
what's absurd. Every politician has supporters who are not helpful to
the politician's reelection. Politicians endure them.
She also failed correct publicly the column where
anti-gay Black minister Bob Battle invoked Natalie
Johnson Lee's name as a reason that many black
politicians are supporting the Bachmann amendment.
She would have been better off if she'd made a clear
statement either way - Yes, Bob Battle represents my
views, or no Bob Battle did not. She chose to avoid
the issue.
For you, Ms. Young, this is the hot button issue. For the fifth ward,
this one appears to be way down on the list. How does signing that
letter read among the preponderance of voters in the fifth ward? You may
know voters who voted against her on the basis of that letter, but for
just how many fifth ward voters was that a deciding issue? How many
single issue voters are there in the fifth ward? GLBT marriage does not
have the backing of the majority of voters--DFL, GOP, et.al. If the
voters had heard of the letter, it could very well have helped her.
How did the gerrymandering hurt Natalie Johnson Lee?
The economic engine for the fifth ward was gerrymandered into the
seventh ward, that's how. The Green members of the redistricting
commission could not overcome the greediness of the seventh ward, nor
stop the DFL from slicing and dicing the wards where Greens were in office.
WizardMarks, Central
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