Dear Editor:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says,
“If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

After watching the local TeeVee news tonight I got to thinking of a modern update of this Christmas story. What would happen if Virginia asked about politics in Knoxville?

It might go something like this:

Dear Editor:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is political machine in Knoxville. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sentinel, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a political machine in Knoxville?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Don’t hold your breath for the local paper to answer that question. Fortunately we have Internet Bloggers that will.

Tuesday Mayor Ragsdale announced his candidacy for Knox County Mayor in a meet and greet at the Foundry. Some 300 connected friends were there along with Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam. Is it just me, or was life around here better when the two Mayors did not get along? Sometimes you need to look at life through the eyes of an eight year old.

What did Mayor Ragsdale’s say his platform is? Developing downtown, bringing jobs, and protecting neighborhoods. Hold the phone Virginia; did Mayor Ragsdale say developing downtown Knoxville was a key priority? Yes he did. But isn’t there a Knoxville City Mayor to do exactly that. Yes there is. But apparently developing downtown Knoxville will work better if you add in Knox County property and tax money. Hold on, isn’t that new school in West Knox County 8 to 10 million dollars short on funding. Yes Virginia, it is. But you see in the world of politics people don’t always do what you might expect.

You see Mayor Ragsdale has never faced an opponent for the office of Mayor. It is a new way of running for office. You raise more campaign money that anyone else and you win. No election necessary. You see Virginia, Mayor Ragsdale wants to run for Governor. He has to demonstrate that he is all things to all people. Perception is everything so the politician must focus more on perception than on actually doing what they were hired to do. Mayor’s can’t take much credit for schools, that credit or blame goes to the Knox County School Board. A group the Mayor is not on great terms with.

Why doesn’t the Mayor just sell the State Street property to the City or some developer and use that money for the school? Shouldn’t the new school be more important than another “if you build it they will come” project downtown? Oh Virginia, unfortunately that is not the way politics works. You see you cannot claim credit unless you build something like Universe Knoxville, the Knoxville Convention Center, or the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. There has to be the illusion of jobs and new places for people to go and spend money. If it is downtown you score special bonus points. In order to be Governor you must build a giant downtown library or a stadium and it must be in downtown Knoxville. Since there are no sports teams left it must be a library or some other wondrous downtown project. It doesn’t really matter if people come because by then you have a new job in Nashville running the entire State of Tennessee.

But isn’t the new school more important than politics? No Virginia. Sadly it is not. In Knoxville there is nothing more important than politics.

Posted in uncategorized on December 6th, 2005 by #9 | RSS 2.0 |