Incumbents win everything

Okay, the election is over. Here's how it came out.

First, in a result that should surprise no one, Lisa Wong handily beat Fuzzy and Tom Donnelly in the mayoral "race".

• Lisa Wong - 60%
• "Write-in votes" (presumably mostly for Donnelly) - 26%
• Fuzzy Voisine - 14%

The city council elections were also predictable, sadly. All the incumbents are back, and known crazy person Rosemary Reynolds joins them. Blech.

In the ward elections, incumbents Boisvert and Starr beat their challengers (Rosado and McNutt).

Fitchburg sure does love its incumbents!

I have no idea why.

Today is a good day to vote!

So, it's election day.

You can see where to vote here. Choose wisely.

That's all.

Happy Halloween!

Here's a Halloween video for you. Might be NSFW in some environments, but only for a few moments.

Donnelly hides in his hole

So, I checked the paper this morning hoping that newly-announced mayoral anti-candidate Tom Donnelly would be in it, presenting all his brilliant ideas about how he'll do things if anyone's stupid enough to vote for him.

Alas, I was disappointed.

Donnelly on Tuesday said Wong painted a "rosy picture" during the last mayoral race, while he gave a more sobering prediction of financial hardships the city would face over the next two years.

"The disparity is in what was promised," said Donnelly, after the Councilor-at-large debate at Fitchburg State College Tuesday night.

Donnelly did not return phone calls for a more extensive interview by press time Wednesday.

That's all we get. I suppose when you're as terrible a campaigner as Donnelly is, it's best to avoid interviews.

But we do have a little bit, so let's unpack it. Here's what Donnelly is basically saying:

During the last election, Lisa Wong gave people hope for great things, and hasn't been able to deliver on every single thing. I, on the other hand, was a gloomy gus who never even tried to inspire people. Therefore, you should vote for me!

Inspiring! Since the current mayor wasn't able to deliver on absolutely everything she hoped for (which of course is all her fault, and has nothing to do with the city council, economic downturn, etc.), people should vote for Donnelly, who promises absolutely nothing. That way they won't be disappointed when he delivers nothing!

Yay?

Oh, there's also this:

Transparency will be the focus of Donnelly's administration, if he is elected, he said Tuesday.

Is there even anything to respond to there? Transparency is what everyone running for office promises, especially if they have nothing else to offer.

Just how stupid does Donnelly think the people of Fitchburg are, anyway? Judging from the comments on Sentinel articles, most people who aren't rabid anti-Wong loonies have in no way forgotten what the guy's all about, or that he helped create the problems Wong has been trying to fix for the last two years. They also see through the whole "I'll swoop in late and avoid any actual campaigning" gambit.

His supporters are pretty much entirely limited to the nuts. Here's a typical example:

good for tom wong sucks and has ruined the city-we are number 11 at fu

Oh no! Not number 11 at fu! We need to get to work improving our fu ranking!

Those are your supporters, Tom. There aren't very many of them, and they're not very coherent. You are officially the anti-Wong candidate, nothing more.

And that's not a good thing to be.

Tom Donnelly running for mayor!

The Fitchburg mayoral race has been really boring this year. Instead of crazy people like Ted DeSalvatore and townie losers like Tom Donnelly, we had crazy quitter Rachel Rosenfeld for a disappointingly short while, and now have Fuzzy Voisine "challenging" the mayor.

But Fuzzy's heart is clearly not in it. He didn't even show up to the debate, and his little recorded message on FATV was just an embarrassment. He was never even a remote danger to Wong's incumbency.

Now things have changed. It's not just Wong vs Fuzzy anymore. Rather, Tom Donnelly is back!

With encouragement from many friends and residents, Thomas Donnelly has decided to launch a write-in campaign for mayor for this year’s general election on Nov. 3.

Donnelly originally decided not to run after mounting an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2007, feeling that the people made it clear then that they did not support him enough to gove him their vote.

Yep, Tom's back! And he's running a write-in campaign. With like a week to go. I imagine that he's hoping people will have forgetten what a massive douchebag he is and vote for him based on pure anti-Wong sentiment.

Actually, I don't need to imagine. He basically stated as much:

Many people changed their mind, however, as Mayor Lisa Wong’s term progressed, according to Donnelly.

“After people saw the way things have been going on in the city, they were saying that ‘I wish I voted for you’,” said Donnelly.

This is the political equivalent of seeing a few bumper stickers that say "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for the Other Guy" and deciding that you'll ride that tiny wave of discontent to victory.

So, what to make of all this? I have a few thoughts.

First off, I don't really consider Donnelly to pose a significant threat to Wong. He probably poses more of a threat than Fuzzy, but that's not saying much. He's also getting into the race extraordinarily late, and won't be on the ballot. He doesn't have enough time to present any compelling ideas, yet has to convince people to go out of their way to write him in.

Basically, his only hope is to ride purely on anti-Wong sentiment, which he'll be splitting with Fuzzy. Is there enough of this sentiment to give him a chance? I seriously doubt it, but you never know.

How about his strengths? Well, the truth of the matter is that Tom Donnelly has never presented any compelling ideas. He ran last time on the "vote for me because I'm an old white guy who has experience" platform, which he can't do this time around. But his lack of ideas does mean that this is the perfect time for him to get into the race. He can say any bullshit he wants, the bootlick newspaper will print it, and there's little time for others to rebut it.

As far as I can tell, Donnelly doesn't have a website (which seems par for the course this time around, annoyingly). He may or may not have an organization behind him to work on his sticker campaign, which will require a lot more work than if he were on the ballot. He hasn't yet put forward any reasons why people should vote for him, beyond the fact that some people don't like Lisa Wong. Really, he's more of an anti-candidate than a candidate. He's the one who bitter old townies will vote for because he'll tell them he's going to turn on their streetlights.

On the plus side, Donnelly getting into the race (or at least pulling up next to it) will hopefully motivate more people to go vote. Before, it would have been easy for the average citizen to skip the election, because Wong was essentially unopposed (sorry Fuzzy). Now there's a real reason to get out there and vote. The rabid anti-Wong whiners will no doubt be out to support Donnelly, so the pro-Wong masses will hopefully be similarly motivated to show up. While they're there voting for Lisa, they'll hopefully also vote in a few good city councilors, and not the bunch of losers who came out at the top of the primary.

So, there we have it. We're in both the early and late stages of Donnelly's campaign. Let's see how crazy he can get!

Fuzzy states his case!

As they often do, the good folks at FATV have put together another informative video of municipal candidates stating their cases. It's pretty long, as they were each invited to give five-minute speeches and 17 candidates are involved, but there's one part of it you have to watch.



The part I'm referring to is Michael "Fuzzy" Voisine's message from 5:19 to 5:55 (yes, his five-minute message was 36 seconds long). It runs right after Lisa Wong's message.

If you're too lazy/at work to watch 36 seconds of haplessness, here's a complete transcript of Fuzzy's message (courtesy of Mr. Lincoln):

Hello Fitchburg. I'm Michael Voisine... Fuzzy as most of you know me. I'm running for mayor... and I'm looking to be all the people’s mayor. I'm hoping to get everybody out there voting. Every vote counts, so... I need your help to make things happen. If we all work together, I think we're gonna have a great time. Thank you very much.

Inspiring words indeed! Too bad the delivery really sucks all the life out of them (yes, the video is actually even worse than the text). He delivers it with all the certainty and vigor of a student trying to give an oral report on a book he didn't bother to read.

But whatever. C'mon Fitchburg, let's have a great time!*


*Preferably, by voting for someone who wouldn't be a total embarrassment to the city, unlike Fuzzy.

WBZ-TV News Is A Chocolatey Fountain of Bullshit

It's not even worth the effort to respond to this piece of utter nonsense from WBZ. Hell, there's nothing there to even argue against. It's not based on anything remotely resembling facts, and is just the usual whining from people who experience petty crime and blame it on streetlights not being on.

Petty crime has always existed, it always will exist, and just because a few local dipshits want to link their particular case of vandalism to streetlights doesn't make it the truth. Five years ago, my neighbor had "fag" spray-painted on his car too, but he also got a bunch of swastikas to go with it. He was parked right under a lit streetlight. Whoopedy-fuck.

Sure, it's disappointing that a supposed "news" show would be so journalistically irresponsible as to claim that a few anecdotes equals a "crime wave," but it's exactly what one should expect from tv news. It's what they've been doing for as long as I can remember, and it's why I haven't willingly watched a tv news show since I was about 17. They tend to induce a sort of berserker frenzy of rage in me.

So, since there's nothing there to actually argue about, I'll just say the same thing I've been saying for 15 years: If you take anything on tv news seriously, then you are a fucking idiot.

That is all.