According to the 2007 Election Countdown Clock which relentlessly "ticks" within our right sidebar, the Emerald City elections loom two weeks from today. And it's in that connection that we are pleased this morning to provide a link to the first set of candidate questionnaire responses to have surfaced in advance of our upcoming elections. Over the weekend, a representative from the Ogden Sierra Club transmitted to us a helpful link to the newly-completed questionnaire which they've uploaded to their website. We incorporate the questionnaire's prefacatory paragraphs here:
To help educate voters about candidates' positions on environmental issues, the Ogden Sierra Club has prepared a candidate questionnaire and sent it to each of Ogden's candidates for mayor and city council. We have posted the candidates' responses in full, linked from their names below. Names without links indicate candidates who have not yet responded. We sincerely thank all of the candidates who have taken the time to answer these detailed questions.We accordingly invite our readers to take a good long look.
We won't comment on the merits of individual responses, at least not at this time. We will however offer our observation, that questionnaires of this type are "useful" in a very broad sense of the word, to a concerned and thinking electorate. Not only do candidate questionnaire responses indicate positions on particular issues, they also provide key insight into the level of public responsiveness which can be expected of aspirants to political office, once responding candidates have successfully ascended to their elective positions. If one mayoral candidate (the usual suspect) for instance, doesn't even demonstrate the interest to respond to nine simple citizen-propounded questions, how much effort will such a candidate be predicted to expend within the upcoming four years, responding to citizen concerns? In the case of mayoral aspirant Boss Godfrey, of course, we already have the answer to the question -- NOT MUCH!
And on the same tangent we take note that there are several council hopefuls who have likewise failed or refused to respond at all. And within the group of those candidates who have responded, several candidates' responses, we believe, reflect perfunctory haste and inattention. Whether they know it or not, even some of those who did respond provided enough information to help us "cull the herd," irrespective of their stated positions on particular issues.
As our readers peruse the several candidate responses, we hope our readers will keep in mind that it's these people with whom we lumpencitizens will be trying to communicate for the next four years.
It's these folks who will be running our town until the year 2012, under a no cut contract with the voters of Ogden.
We would also like to thank the people at the Ogden Sierra Club for preparing the questionnaire, compiling the candidate responses and sending us the link. We did one of these in advance of the 2005 primary election, and we know such a project entails lots of work.
We would also like to again direct our readers' attention to the 2007 election module in our right sidebar. It's been substantially augmented since we last mentioned it here, as candidates have continued to send us their data and website links. Please note that we've also added the above questionnaire to the already-existing links.
So let's open the discussion with the subject matter of the Sierra Club questionnaire, and see where this topic leads us.
