Write-in Mania!

The Chapel Hill Herald reports that Pat Killian is challenging Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy as a write-in candidate! Although I've wished repeatedly and vocally for mayoral options, this campaign is even more suicidal than Jeff Vanke's in Carrboro. You just can't win the top office in town with a half-assed, last-minute campaign. Especially given this:

Killian didn't offer any specific criticism Tuesday of what Foy has and hasn't done in his two years as mayor.
"I'm just hoping that perhaps I have some other ideas that he maybe doesn't have," she said.

Killian lives on the part of Mason Farm that's in the path of UNC's future expansion, and her home basically is an "island" surrounded by land that UNC now owns, she said. ... [But] "it's not about me living on Mason Farm Road," she said. "That's not where I want to go with this. It's about a bigger picture.

I'm always glad to see more civic participation, but the "big picture" looks to me like she's wasting time and energy that could be used to support good candidates.

Issues:

Elections

Comments

Maybe she just doesn't like

Submitted by Duncan Murrell (not verified) on November 30, 1999 - 1:00am

Maybe she just doesn't like the idea of unopposed candidates, on principle? She's doesn't seem prepared to run like Vanke, who is serious and holding press conferences and what not. This reminds me of Joel Zimmerman's write-in candidacy during the last mayoral election in Carrboro. He had no other interest other than to give people a choice, and even said he thought Mike Nelson had done a good job. His signs only appeared at the voting places the day of the election, he spent $60, and he still polled 100 votes. Maybe most of those votes were votes against Mike Nelson, but I'd be willing to bet that some of them were just votes for choice.

So Pat Killian continues a local quixotic tradition, and I'm pleased to see it. I'm especially glad to see a choice in the Chapel Hill mayoral race, since Kevin Foy has obviously been invaded by the bodysnatchers: making nice with Roger Perry, his bete noire of longstanding; doing the bidding of Michelle Lewis, who is apparently an emissary from the office of Solicitor General Ted Olson, or so she implied during the recent panhandling debate.

(Michelle Lewis has even given interviews to an out-of-town newspaper -- the Amherst Gazette, last year -- as an "aide" to Mayor Kevin Foy, explaining the way the mayor's office works in Chapel Hill. Will someone please explain to me who the hell Michelle Lewis is, and why she's removed the brain of my mayor?)