A while ago, I did a post about two potential candidates for the City Council’s 7th District. Jim Madaffer still has two more years in that post, but I heard a few things about who is planning to run in future elections around the city so I decided to get a few of them on the record.
April Boling confirmed that, without a doubt, she is running for Madaffer’s seat. Johnnie Perkins, another rumored candidate, was less affirmative.
After I put that post up, I got a flood of emails with other rumors going around about who will be running for City Council seats. Readers were emboldened by my message that if a political blog like this is not the place for this kind of early political speculation, what is?
So I’ll dig into those other rumors and hopefully confirm some of it – or disprove it – so we can start to imagine what the future of the city will look like.
But I thought I’d share an analysis that a local Republican insider provided about the District 7 race and April Boling and Johnnie Perkins’ comments and their desires to take Madaffer’s spot. The source preferred to remain unnamed so as to be able to speak freely.
Johnnie was measuring the office for drapes until April unexpectedly jumped into the race after saying several times over the last year that she wasn’t interested. April ran against Judy McCarty and lost. Johnnie’s star has been tarnished by concerns among the Republican king-and-queen makers about his past with the firefighters and cozy relationship with Saathoff.
They learned from Jim Madaffer and Brian Maienschein that Republicans with the firefighter endorsement don’t act like Republicans when it comes to voting on labor issues. Johnnie will be out of the race if he figures out that he can’t block the Republican Party endorsement of April, which opens the door to big bucks in member communications expenditures for her.
This block of money offsets the money unions spend in a race. Republicans who generally get the “dirty” developer money are able to avoid the stigma by having the check sent to the Republican Party. And even better, the checks are bigger then the measly $250 max the campaign can accept directly.
Bob Ottilie was also thinking about running, but is said to have nixed it when he heard April was in the race. Bob ran for council in District 6 and lost to Bruce Henderson.
It’s too bad Bob is out. He’s a real maverick type and would have kept all the special interest groups guessing on where he would fall on an issue.
The lone democrat I’ve heard of is Marty Block, who is on the community college board. If Johnnie is out, Block gets a big boost because he’ll pick up all the city union endorsements. Registration/turnout data in District 7 suggests that the council seat can go to either a Republican or a Democrat.
I thought that was interesting so I pass it on. If you have your own reasonably intelligent take on what might happen with city politics, let me know. I love shameless speculation.