Saturday, March 14, 2009

Of Parades And Politics

Reason Number 1,247 to live downtown: once in a while on a Saturday morning, a parade goes by your front door.

First, kudos to the high school marching bands that were in this morning's parade. The St. Patrick's day parade is always an awkward one for marching bands: quite a while has passed since the end of football (halftime show) season, and it's a while before you need to be ready for the summer parade season.

Second, today's parade marks something of an unofficial start to the meet-and-greet portion of campaign season. Several local politicians were out and about. I missed the first third of the parade, so I'm not sure who I missed, but here's some observations about what I saw:

  • Jeff Berding isn't quite ready for the fall campaign yet; he's still using banners with the slogan from his last campaign, "New Leadership for Change." I'm not sure you can run on that theme when you're an incumbent.
  • Greg Harris was out, meeting people and shaking hands. So were Amy Murray and Chris Monzel.
  • Laure Quinlivan had some folks carrying her banner, but I didn't see her. That's kind of strange.
  • There were some Council candidates in the parade who I'd not known were running. Brian Garry (who finished 18th in 2007's race) is gearing up for the 2009 campaign. Lemaque Ward, founder of the Cincinnati Dream Academy, was energetically shaking hands, even at the parade's conclusion on Plum Street. Kevin Flynn, an attorney whose website indicates he is endorsed by the Charter Committee (I haven't seen any announcement about their full slate of endorsements--can someone point me?) was present. And there was another new candidate whose name I don't quite remember--Polovich, perhaps? (Someone help me out here.) Steve Pavelish, who finished 23rd in 2007, was out shaking hands.
  • Steve Chabot hasn't stopped campaigning since 1994 and today was no exception. And either Jean Schmidt or her twin sister was also in the parade.
It was nice to see both the nice crowd and the large number of local politicians at the parade.
(Post updated on 3/15/09, with some help from philgirl in the comments.)

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