Revenge, is it Best Served Cold?

I had a friend from my facebook today write a column about how revenge and the law are not a cool combination. In court revenge is not a defense and you will be found guilty if that is all you have to offer a judge. In the world of politics I once knew somebody who summed it up best, “don’t get mad get even.” No court in this country can stop voters from getting revenge when they are angry with a candidate. Just ask any republican.

Tomorrow is the mayor’s election and we are looking at the Republican Party’s attempt to get even by taking that long held seat away from the democrats. Their angrier has been on a slow boil even since last November and they are beginning to smell blood in the water with the split in our party. The questions is, are the democrats motivated enough to keep this long held seat? Tomorrow will tell if the turnout is low then we could loss this seat but if the turnout is large then we could even see a runoff between two very good democratic candidates.

Candidates are working hard in the Northeast part of the city to being in those last few undecided voters so that they can get to or prevent the opposition from achieving the magic number to get them either over 40% or getting enough to put them in a runoff election.

Today Mayor Chavez released an endorsement from no other then President Bill Clinton in the hopes that voters who like him will be swayed into supporting the present mayor. He has already gotten the support of Howard Dean who is a leader in the progressive movement. The mayor over the last few years has made a lot of friends in high power seats and now he is using those contacts to help him win so maybe this election does matter to him.

Richard Romero has also starting pulling out endorsements in the hopes that local and state progressive leaders will have an effect on how people vote. Romero is hoping that the early vote will get him into a runoff and that his ground troops have managed to achieve the magic number to that end. He went with past Obama workers and used the president’s strategy knowing that it worked last year in this city.

Notice how the Republican Party has been quiet about supporting R.J. Berry in a city that has more democrats than republicans. The last thing the Republican Party wants to do is motivate democrats to come out in force on elections day and they know if the democrats sense a threat from the other party that it would increase turnout for tomorrow’s election. They are hoping that democrats will not understand that they are in hot water until it is too late and they are cooked. The only problem they have seen so far with that strategy is the poll put out by the local news paper that warned voters there may be a problem.

Tomorrow is Election Day and hopefully democrats will turnout in large numbers or we may just see what happened to our country over the past years happen right here in our own city after all R.J. Berry has run as a very right leaning republican.