With the vote on the mayor of Irving and several council places due this weekend, candidate placards have been springing up on lawns near my house like overnight mushrooms.
Being the sort of vaguely-techie person that I am, I decided to investigate the candidates for Mayor and for council Place 5 (which is my local area).
(DISCLAIMER - I cannot currently vote because I am not yet a citizen. Soon, that will change).
To my amazement, despite the best part of 30 minutes of searching, I could find a web site for 3 of the mayoral candidates and 2 of the Place 5 candidates.
It is interesting to note that not only is all politics local (as the late Tip O'Neill famously said), it also seems to be behind the times when it comes to message communication.
What little I managed to glean on the candidates from reading Irving and Dallas newspaper and commentary sights did not enthuse me very much. Every candidate seems to be saying more or less the same things: "preserve the tax base","respect minorities","encourage businesses to come here", "tighten up code enforcement", "make the streets safe" etc. etc. All worthy things, but these fall into the category of what I call GMHAP (God MotherHood and Apple Pie); saying that "we need to persuade businesses to come here" is kind of like saying to your neighbour "you know it would be a good idea if you breathed a few thousand times today". It's a "duh!" statement. I looked in vain for any Different Ideas or evidence of some imagination.
I also noted that turnout in the last mayoral election was extremely low - only around 15% of eligible electors voted. With that level of turnout, and what I can see of the quality of the candidates, I think that local governance here in Irving is in some trouble.
All of this has spurred me to realize that I really don't know much about the dynamics and finances of Irving. I will be working to rectify that knowledge deficit in the coming months.