The Almanac is taking a brief vacation. I suppose I should have announced that Thursday, eh? Well, you folks get what you pay for (and it's worth every cent.)
We'll be back on Monday with the usual half-witty commentary and whatnot. In the meantime, why not go see what James Lileks or Rip Rense have to say?
OK, because I bolloxed up the McKeesport Area School District race earlier today (the screwed up info has since been deleted), here's the correct information, courtesy the Allegheny County Division of Elections: The Democratic nominees are Wayne Washowich, Lori Spando, Dave Donato and Barbara Stevenson, while the Republican nominees are Donato, Stevenson, Spando and Washowich. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
All of the winners are incumbents. Aye, but here's the rub, according to Pat Cloonan in the News: The terms of two of the people running (Donato and Spando) weren't going to expire until 2007, but they ran anyway. In the process, they bumped two other school directors whose terms were going to expire (Harry Stratigos and Gerry Tedesco) off of the November ballot.
This is either fiendishly evil or devilishly clever. I'm not sure which yet, but I suspect it depends on whose side you were rooting for. (I don't live in the district, so I don't have a dog in the fight.) I do know that it offends my own sense of fair play, even if it's legal, and I'm sorry I missed the earlier coverage of this loophole; Cloonan writes that state Rep. Marc Gergely has introduced legislation to prevent this from happening again.
As best as I can figure, this also means that come December, the McKeesport Area school board is going to have two technically vacant seats --- the current terms of Donato and Spando. That means the seven remaining board members will have to appoint two directors to fill the remaining two years on their terms. I suspect this will set off a lovely round of political hair-pulling.
I don't understand people who say they don't care about local politics. Hell, watching local politics is more fun than cable TV, and it's free!
Well, OK, it's not free if you count the tax money you pay to subsidize this lunacy, but you get my point.
I can only describe it as stunned disbelief --- the feeling of gloom that settled over the Tube City Online Laboratories last night as the election results came in. Based on carefully calculated results from our head researcher, Dr. Pica Pole, we went out on a limb Tuesday and predicted a big upset victory in the Picksberg Democratic mayoral primary for Louis "Hop" Kendrick.
It wasn't until about 11 p.m. that Dr. Pole and his crack assistant, Spike Nutgraf, discovered what had happened --- apparently, Dr. Pole had mixed up his formula for estimating election returns with his formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. That explains why he had Kendrick winning by a margin of nine-fifths plus 32 over his nearest competitor. (Frankly, we should have realized something was wrong when Dr. Pole had the row office reform referendum passing by a margin of 20 "degrees.")
On behalf of Dr. Pole, my sincerest apologies. He's taking the rest of the week off to, as he puts it, "see how I can blame this on Nutgraf."
In other news, in complete but unofficial returns from the Allegheny County Division of Elections, it looks like Our Fair City will have at least one new councilman. Democrat Paul Shelly was leading the field with 1,616 votes last night. Incumbents Dale McCall and Darryl Segina were in second and third place, respectively, while it seems as if incumbent Ann Stromberg lost her bid for the nomination. No Republicans were filed. (UPDATE: Duh. It just dawned on me that I completely screwed up the McKeesport school board results by forgetting to add in the votes from South Versailles, Versailles and White Oak. Sorry. Corrected totals will follow later today.)
Over in South Allegheny, it looks as if incumbent school directors Naomi Rosche and Doris Bailley lost their bids for re-election. Returns from the Allegheny County Division of Elections indicate that the Democratic nominees were Louis Borrelli, incumbent Dino DeFelice, Raymond Luppe and Pete Miller, while the Republican nominees are Borrelli, DeFelice, Luppe and incumbent Kurt Betzner.
In the new magisterial district that covers both the City of Clairton and the South Allegheny communities of Port Vue, Liberty and Glassport, District Judge Armand Martin of Clairton appears to have captured both the Republican and Democratic nominations. Complete but unofficial returns show Martin with 2,499 Democratic votes, followed by Gabe Pediconi, Luke Riley and George Adams, while Martin had 183 Republican votes, followed by Riley, Pediconi and Adams. Martin has been the district judge for Clairton for several years, but the three boroughs on the opposite side of the Clairton bridge were added to his district when Ed Burnett retired. Naturally, he was helped by the wide margins he ran up in his hometown of Clairton --- 3-to-1 among Republicans and 5-to-1 among Democrats --- but he also won the largest share of Democratic votes in both Port Vue and Glassport. (Riley, an SA school director and longtime police chief in Liberty, easily won in that borough, as might be expected.)
Links to election returns from all Mon-Yough area communities follow below.
I was voter number 10 at North Bittyburg Borough, Ward 3, Precinct 1, at 7:50 a.m. this morning. There was no one behind me. "People are just too complacent," said one of the poll watchers as I left. Indeed; I'd like to see a law passed that would require every person driving around with an American flag or a "Remember 9-11" magnetic ribbon on their car to vote in every election. I got your patriotism right here, fella.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's only a primary, and you don't know anything about the candidates. Well, that's not much of an excuse. The Daily News has been running profiles of practically every single candidate in every single race in the Mon-Yough area. I haven't seen the Gateway papers recently, but I'd bet money that they've covered the races in the Woodland Hills and Norwin school districts. The Trib and P-G have had stories as well.
Most people pay the largest percentage of their local taxes to the school district where they live; to torture a metaphor, not being interested in your local school board is like being a chicken who's not interested in Colonel Sanders.
I'll admit that the county judge candidates baffle me. Out of the entire field, I had strong positive opinions about four people running, and a negative opinion of one. Unfortunately, I was supposed to choose seven, but I didn't --- I just voted for the four people I knew something about.
If you don't want to vote for any candidates, vote for an issue! There are two important referenda on the ballot today. The first would amend the Allegheny County charter to eliminate several row offices and replace the elected county coroner with a qualified medical examiner. (With apologies to Tim Menees, the offices being eliminated do not include "profanitary," "clerk of quartz," or "lamplighter.") The second would allow the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to borrow $625 million to create an environmental cleanup fund.
For goodness sakes, I can think of strong reasons to vote either for or against either of those issues. (How did I vote? I ain't sayin'.)
People in Tube City Almanac territory, of course, can't vote in the Democratic primary for mayor of Picksberg --- their choices, as I recall, are either Bob O'Connor or Mumbly Joe. I'm predicting a big upset victory for Hop Kendrick --- if it happens, you read about it here first!
They also can't vote in the 42nd Senatorial District special election, where voters have the thrilling choice of either Wayne Fontana, Michael Diven or Mark Rauterkus. That district encompasses most of the South Hills and several Ohio Valley boroughs. (I thought Fontana's recording of "Game of Love" was terrific, but I don't know if one hit single is enough to send him to the state Senate.)
Anyway, according to Fontana's commercials, Diven sneaks into the bedrooms of sleeping infants and smothers them, while according to Diven's commercials, Fontana pushes old ladies in wheelchairs down long flights of stairs. It's kind of a battle between who you loathe least. I haven't seen any commercials for Rauterkus, and that alone should provide some incentive to vote for him.
...
In other business: David Craig Simpson teed off on the President's comments about Yalta, and in my opinion, scored a hole-in-one:
According to Bush, with seven million Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, with the country, the continent and the world exhausted already from half a decade of brutal war, FDR was a big pansy for not getting into a war with Stalin. Apparently we still had too many young men who hadn't been killed off.
Seriously, does anyone think we should've turned right around and gotten into World War III before World War II had even ended? We hadn't defeated Japan yet, at the time. The very idea is stupid.
Especially considering the source. It's interesting that George W. Bush, who we're always being told is this era's Churchill, is now dissing Churchill for the Yalta agreement. But obviously Churchill is just collateral damage. FDR is the real target. This way, they can have WWII without venerating FDR.
Letters! We get letters! We get ... well, actually not that many. But a few. Regarding my two-day answer to a question that no one asked --- namely, what cars would be on my wish list --- Alert Reader Officer Jim wrote in to say he has a thing (naturally) for vintage squad cars:
I'd have to say that number one on my list would be a 1969 Dodge Polara Pursuit with the 4-bbl 440, which would have to look something like this although picture it black and white with massive pushbars).
I can't image what a vehicle of that size would be like to drive at 150 mph, but I can image it would be similar to piloting a B-17 (and probably handle about as well). Equally as fun to drive might be a '67 or '68 Dodge Dart GT, but that would absolutely have to be a convertible. And since my tastes inexplicably veer towards mid to late '70s sedans, I'd have to put a 1977 or '78 Monaco/Fury on the list, which would definitely look like this.
I might even make an overture towards a similar model year Gran Fury, which I think is a sharp looking car (yeah, I'm weird).
Speaking of Dodge, it looks like the nameplate "Powerwagon" is back to being attached to a Dodge truck. I'm not sure when they stopped using "Powerwagon" (late 1970's?) or if this is the first model year of it's return, but it's good to see the name back. After all, it can be traced directly back to the light duty 4x4's that Dodge built for WWII so there's a solid heritage there. I've liked the current style of Dodge trucks (about the only Mopar I've liked in the past few years) and I think that it's notable that Ford and Chevy trucks have echoed the high nose/low fender style. Hopefully the "Ram Van" will come back too ("Sprinter?" Seriously now, what would Red Green say?) I guess a Powerwagon would be on my list too, about a mid-'70s model with the railroad tie front bumper so that whenever some moron dared to pull out in front of me or swing open his door just as I drive past, I could take out my road-rage without undue damage (to my vehicle, at least).
While it seems most of my picks would be Chrysler products, I am smitten with the new Mustangs and about a 1966 Galaxie 500 ragtop would suit me nicely.
Of course, for luxury I would have to jump back to the late 40's/early 50's Packards which hands down looked better than anything Cadillac or Lincoln was putting out.
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