Over the past couple months I have made a few posts on the upcoming election with a primary focus on county races. This is largely because frankly that is where the action is this election cycle. Some of the races are hotly contested, there are important issues at stake, some candidates are vulnerable, and there are some fresh faces on the scene.
I didn’t intend however to ignore the races in Fort Thomas. Unlike 2008 where there was an unprecedented number of candidates running for council there is only a slight challenge to the incumbents this year. In addition to the current sitting 6 council members; Haas, Doepker, Kelly, Lampe, Peterman, and Stiller, Jeremy Cantor is challenging and will be on the ballot in November. I am disappointed that more challengers that were in the race two years ago did not decide to run again this time. I am not running largely because I have 6 month old twins at home that need a lot of attention.
With that being said I thought I would offer a preview of how the election of local officials will break down this year and offer my endorsements (for what it’s worth) on council this year. You read the headline correctly this is part 1 of a two part post over 2 days as the council review has gotten quite lengthy. In this post I will focus on the mayoral election.
Unfortunately Mary Brown is again running unopposed. While I believe Mary Brown may be a good person by judging her support of various community groups I believe she fundamentally wants something different for Fort Thomas than most of its citizens want. Sure we all want a safe, clean, beautiful community that provides and excellent education but I believe she falls into a camp of people (perhaps the majority but becoming more and more the minority) that want Fort Thomas to be a closed off community of beautiful homes that provides little to no entertainment value for its citizens and can’t sustain locally owned retail businesses for fear that it may attract someone that doesn’t look, think, or like the same things they do. This is not the Fort Thomas that I want and I believe is not the Fort Thomas that the many people I know and live life with want.
Hopefully sometime soon a strong challenger will enter their name as competition for her position. Of course they will have to wait four more years to do so.