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Posts published in “Day: October 29, 2015”

Incumbent’s advantage

frazierlogo1

Judy Peavey-Derr filed at the last minute in a bid to unseat incumbent Dave Bieter who is seeking a fourth term which could carry him to a 16 year reign as Boise’s top politico.

Peavey-Derr positioned herself as a champion of the Bench and southwest citizens. She didn’t count on Bieter standing in a new park on Federal Way announcing his dedication to residents of the Boise Bench with new playground equipment.

She advocates parks and open space, but not the proposed Foothills levy. Bieter stood before the TV cameras to break ground for a new three acre park along the Boise River.

He was joined by two incumbent councilors who are also running for re-election.

When Peavey-Derr called a press conference to perform a victory dance for the Greater Boise Auditorium District’s supreme court ruling over Dave Frazier (GUARDIAN editor), Bieter hijacked the moment and waltzed before the cameras and waved his arm with promises of “even more” construction projects, “like the one behind me.” She is a member of the GBAD board.

Wednesday, Peavey-Derr scheduled a media event to spotlight her plans to create “districts” (known as “wards” in big cities) so citizens would have councilors from throughout the city and not just north of the Boise River. Bieter and Team Dave put a big shadow over her spotlight as they broke ground across town for a 5th library at Bown Crossing in Southeast Boise.

We gotta hand it to Team Dave. They know how to play the game of politics. Amazing how all these projects just happened to come up a month before the election! Timing is everything.

First take/debate

The Republican presidential debate round three was having some trouble differentiating from round two, or round one - the crowd was the same as it was in number two with the exception of the departed Scott Walker. And the players mostly played their familiar roles, Dona Trump blustering his way through, Ben Carson getting through as quietly as he could, Jeb Bush never quite connecting. Reviews of the four-man undercard debate generally seemed to agree that Lindsey Graham did best, and that seemed about right. But time has surely arrived to start the winnowing process. By now it should be clear that none of the four at the kids' table are going to make the leap; they should drop out. And two or three on the main stage ought to take a serious look at doing that too. Months have gone by in this campaign so far, and many twists remain, but some improbabilities have gotten pretty clear. - rs (illustration)