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Published Brownsville Herald May 18, 2008

In my last column, I looked generally at the Navigation District election with a little speculation as to skills and baggage each brings to the table. Personally, I consider each a patriot for coming to the forefront to serve and am aware of the sacrifice of time and efforts involved and often only receive criticism. 

I wish there were even more candidates, especially – just real folks with “Common Sense,” so we could have more choices at each election. That is what that forms the foundation of my political activity. It is how the, now ex-candidate acquit themselves in office that improves the community or disadvantages it. 

Within the community, any community there are many influences the come to bear on the office holder, each for the lack of a better term, I will call power centers. Many are groups with specific altruistic goals others are for more personal ones. The animal welfare, ecology, historical preservation, and anti-war interests are indeed focused on increasing their political influence and are no less power centers than the industry specific development, raw power seekers, banking, legal and real estate power centers are. They often use their abilities to raise funds in support of candidates that may be inclined to support the “correct” position. Very frequently the candidate campaigns on issues that are attractive to a particular power center and benefits his campaign, but occasionally the power center brings influence in other ways to advance its goals. A big part of the election process is the divination of the direction of the professional candidate or just assess his or her capacity to be straight forward, fair and sensible. I go for fair and sensible every time over power accumulators! 

For sure, the election will result in a mixture of power goals and altruistic ones in the elected candidates and incumbents that remain.  More »

Published Brownsville Herald May 4, 2008

This is the first of a two part piece – don’t miss part two in the next “Common Sense”