Diane's often clever repartee here and elsewhere notwithstanding, she misses the point regarding Chris Coleman's role in ignoring neighborhood concerns until the brewery shut down and Tom Fabel faded away from representing GSE.
I'm not going to repeat my earlier statement on Coleman's GSE involvement. That's available in the archive for those nuts enough to call it up, but it's disingenuous to defend Chris Coleman as having little or role in protecting the ethanol company's interests far beyond the Fall of 2000. Still, if delegates wish to cite Chris for his support of Kelly and GSE as reason enough not to elevate him to the mayor's office, it's sure as hell their prerogative. However, Dennis' suggestion that Chris' connection to GSE alone should sway delegates (and voters, I presume) from Coleman to Ortega may be reaching for a hook for West 7th residents inclined to overlook Chris' self-serving behavior in that issue, except that that same attitude pervaded much, not all, of his "work" on the City Council, especially after it became clear that his purported progressivity was nowhere to be found on a variety of city issues and had no business claiming to be a DFLer. The fact that Coleman's own ward convention failed to produce a majority of delegates after two terms in office should speak volumes to delegates elsewhere that his neighbors and, perhaps, previous supporters in his council races, have walked to his competitor, Raphael Ortega, once Coleman's next door neighbor. No elected official can live up to the promises he's made, but being able to defend his lies is another matter. From the beginning of his first campaign, Coleman claimed credit for keeping the metal shredder from being built next door to Our Lady of Guadalupe church as one example of neighborhood activism that should qualify him for the office. In fact, Chris Coleman was nowhere near the shredder issue. I was intimately involved with that effort and he was nowhere to be seen. The leaders of that committee, Lee Olson and Sherilyn (I'm sorry to have forgotten her last name), with Michelle Hoffman and a few other West Siders and a couple from other areas, did all the heavy pulling and politicking for over two years. They were everywhere with our logo, flyers, news gatherings, legislation, community meetings and I don't know what all. I sat on the steering committee and helped on graphics, some lobbying and such, but nowhere did any of us see Chris Coleman. Yet he played that issue like a violin without a conductor to call him on it, and that was one of the reasons the man who at least had a modicum of respect from me lost it completely. >From there, Coleman never had to defend his statements or his position in a public arena, because, after the Ward 2 convention in 1997, he went forward without opposition, leaving voters to only guess what sort of public servant he would be. The litany of disappointments that have come out of his years on the Council would fill a long scroll. He played his filial tie to his father, Nick Coleman for all it was worth, and those who really knew Nick, assume that, as a policymaker, he's been rolling in his blessed grave. No saint was Nick, but the man had integrity and moxie and a true sense of humor and great leadership qualities and Chris' claim to be the one scion to have inherited that mantel is an empty one, in my view. So. GSE history is rife with the hot and cold of Chris Coleman's machinations, available only when it was convenient and never when it was risky, changing loyalties and stripes when it suited his political purposes. Absent the kind of integrity we should all be demanding of our candidates and elected officials, no one seeking office by dint of pure ambition, little understanding of the deep duty to the public interest and public policy, and personal aggrandizement should be allowed to serve. Andy Driscoll Crocus Hill/Ward 2 -- "Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity." - Lord Acton -- Visit our weblog: http://newswired.blogspot.com Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 11:42:05 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [StPaul] GSE taint �Do you now or have you ever had contact with someone who had coffee with someone who once knew someone who from the get-go didn�t think Jack Lee should be hauled into the street and shot like a rabid dog?� Dennis thinks that Thune ought to support Ortega because �Chris Coleman endorsed the candidate who was �backed by supporters of the ethanol plant� in the city council race in 2003.�� Andrea wrote:� "I can't support anybody who has supported GSE - or for that matter has been supported in return by GSE" � Let�s be reasonable here.� If Chris accepted campaign contributions from anyone connected with GSE for his run in 2000, let�s remember that back in the fall of 2000 we were at a point where we�d had only one or two meetings with plant officials, the CO2 facility hadn�t yet been installed, the brewery jobs were still hanging in the balance, and we hadn�t run into the resistance we later saw.� Moreover, if the taint spreads as far as Dennis would have it (can�t support anyone who accepted support from someone who supported GSE), take a look at the unions here.� One of the last times that GSE's ethanol producer payment subsidy was up for consideration at the State legislature, it wasn't GSE up �there advocating publicly that it be continued.� Nor was it the farmers.� No, not even the other ethanol producers.� No lobbyists. No paid mouthpieces. The lone speaker at the hearing saying that my tax dollars should continue to pay for the deterioration of my neighborhood, the decline of my property values, and the continued illness of my family and my neighbors was the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council, Dick Anfang.� Are we going to reject their endorsed candidates?� I think we need to cut the taint off somewhere. Diane Gerth I really live in the West End �Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?�� ��Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
