Why I'm voting for Brad Gross

I have made up my mind. I am going to vote for underdog Brass Gross (that's "graas", as in "loss") in the Winnipeg mayoral election. Why? Glad you asked. I will tell you why, and will accompany my explanation with quickie doodles of each candidate:

Sam Katz
Sam has not earned my vote as mayor. His complete butchery of the rapid transit project alone might be enough to drive a voter like me away, but that's just where it starts. He didn't keep his word on Upper Fort Garry, the bus service to my neighbourhood has been cut in half under his watch, and our infrastructure deficit keeps climbing. His whole management system involves knee-jerk decision making without due process or diligence, meanwhile the city continues it's unsustainable sprawl into the surrounding farmland.

Don't get me started on the ugly sport coats...

Judy Wasy-whatever

Judy has three things going for her: 1) she's not Sam. 2) she actually took a position on property taxes. 3) she has a comprehensible position on rapid transit .. at least phase 1. However, at the same time she committed to by-passing the competitive bid process in favor of going straight to local co. New Flyer. In other news: the cost of New Flyer BRT buses just doubled.

That's the thing about Judy. She is going to spend money faster than my wife on a shopping trip in New York. The entire tax hike has been committed to infrastructure and policing according to her web site, which means that all of her other hare-brained ideas will have to get money from somewhere else. Where do these ideas come from anyhow? Who determined that there was demand for garden markets all over the city? How exactly are you going to create those and what happens if they're not successful? You could ask a dozen questions about every one of her ideas, but the only clear answer is that they'll all cost money. Remember: this is somebody who came straight out of the Provincial NDP: the party that overspent it's budget every single year and gutted our balanced budget legislation. I fear the day that a Judy administration has to negotiate a contract with a City workers' union:

Union Boss: we demand a 7% raise over two years.

Judy: 10%

Union Boss: Errrrr. Okay.

Judy: hey, this negotiating stuff isn't so hard!

Those are some of the reasons why I cannot vote for Judy. Or maybe it's because she's a woman, (not withstanding the fact that I voted for a woman in the last Federal election.)

Rav Gill

I am tempted to vote for Rav, simply because if I do not I am afraid he might turn me into a bat. However, I can't vote for Rav either. The campaign information on his website is so sparse that I have no idea what's he's planning on doing. For a fringe candidate who routinely gets neglected by the media, you would figure that he would have all kinds of detail out there for people to research on their own, but I guess not. It doesn't even list his promise of creating a gay village. Maybe that's because he realizes that it's a idiotic promise. I am sure that some other cities have gay villages, but were they created by politicians? Really? How do you do that anyhow? Give exclusive property tax breaks to homosexuals?

That leaves...

Brad Gross

Brad has a terrible website. The platform

on his main page looks like it was typed out over a coffee break with no prior thought whatsoever. Worse, the pages specific to each area of his platform like traffic, crime, and so forth, have no content whatsoever. He is obviously just doing this to increase his profile to benefit his real job as a realtor.

So why vote for him? Because in a campaign almost completely absent of vision and big ideas, Brad pushes the boundaries:

• solar powered street lights!
• move industrial areas away from the middle of the city!
• community centres run by university students!
• expel criminals! Ya, there we go! Not quite sure how you're going to do that, and I'm pretty sure it's a charter violation, but Ya!

Sure, most of the ideas miss the mark completely or are impossible to implement, but I like the idea of reducing the number of traffic lights and getting education taxes off the property tax bill. But that's not the point. The point is that if people vote for this guy with the crazy ideas, that might send a message to whoever wins that what we need at city hall is not rhetoric and fear mongering and waffling, but vision and bold thinking.

If I vote for Sam, then I'm rewarding incompetence. If I vote for Judy and she gets in, then I'll feel like I had a hand in the damaging policies and reckless spending that are sure to follow. Brad however is not going to win, so if I vote for him then I can rest easy knowing that I didn't contribute to the destruction of our city.

*all images © Me, whoever the hell I am.