It's official! Wendy McCaw, through her Santa Barbara News-Press, has served notice that no candidate in this year's elections for either mayor or city council is likely to be good enough for her.
The notice was delivered in the form of an editorial that ran in Wednesday's paper.
The signs that no candidate will cut the mustard? Consider this quote:
Two people have tossed their hats in the ring for the mayor's job. There could be at least one more competitor in that race as well.
Don't those "two people" and "one more competitor" have names? There were mayor's race articles on the news pages of the paper both Wednesday and the day before. I know a lot of people have stopped reading the News-Press but I didn't realize that editorial writer Travis Armstrong was among them.
Or then again, maybe Travis and his boss Wendy are just trying to send a message that no one yet announced or about to be announced as a candidate is worthy of having their name mentioned on the News-Press opinion pages in any manner that could remotely be construed as positive.
According to the editorial, what Santa Barbara needs are leaders who will "stick to their promises and have the courage to challenge the special interests that are destroying our city."
Destroying our city?
Katrina destroyed New Orleans. McCaw and Armstrong would have us believe that Santa Barbara is in danger of being wiped out by Hurricane Helene.
And just who are those "special interests?" If you believe the editorial it's the public-employee unions.
If you're like me and thought it was the dire state of the economy that was the reason for that looming city budget deficit I guess we were wrong. According to the editorial, the blame belongs to "union bosses and their handmaidens on the council."
(BTW, the term "handmaiden" has long been a favorite of Wendy's.)
And yes, the Santa Barbara Police Officer's Association, which sure looks and acts like a "union" has already indicated that it will be endorsing Iya Falcone for mayor.
So much for the theory that Falcone has the News-Press endorsement in her Gucci bag.
So, if not Falcone, and maybe not Steve Cushman and certainly not Helene Schneider, then who?
I think it's safe to say that anybody out there who wants the News-Press endorsement had better be ready to run those public-employee unions out of town.
For the first time since the post-Jerry Roberts era, News-Press reporters have won an award.
Mark Patton and Alex Pavlovic have each been recognized as being in the top 10 for columns and features respectively, in the category of newspapers with a circulation of under 40,000 in the Associated Press Sports Editors' writing and section contest.
And I was worried the prize was going to go to "Staff Report."
© 2009 by Craig Smith and www.craigsmithsblog.com
