Capone, Adrien seen as top contenders
By JOSH RESNEK
March is quickly turning into April. The winter is vanishing. The cold is dissipating. The pandemic is lessening its grip on all of us.
Now comes the mayoral campaign.
This is Everett’s Kentucky
Derby, its fight for the championship, its proverbial effort to determine who is the most popular of them all in Everett?
Who will that be this time around?
The mayor has announced early. He has set many things in motion for his reelection.
He believes he can’t lose.
That’s never the right way to approach an election, thinking you can’t lose.
The mayor running for, yet another term is getting a bit much, even for him. Even his supporters are aghast at over-development, poor management and some believe, mismanagement of funds, excessive spending, crimping on public safety, and pretending to care about public school education when he doesn’t.
The mayor has nowhere to go. He has nothing else to do. He needs his position and salary as much as any of us need our income and place in this world.
His place as the mayor is not guaranteed.
Enter Councilor Fred Capone.
I know he is running.
He is putting together the various things that a mayoral candidate is required to do.
He has hired several political strategists who know what they are doing.
He is putting together video and photography for his messaging.
He is talking daily with people across the city about his candidacy.
The time will shortly come when he officially announces – and then he’s off to the races, so to speak, with trying to beat the mayor.
He hasn’t yet announced but he remains quite confident in his own ability to become the next mayor of Everett.
He is said to prefer a one-on-one race.
The mayor believes he can’t lose and certainly not to Capone and not in a one-on-one race.
Capone’s official announcement will come soon enough. The mayor will have an opponent.
Now comes Councilor Gerly Adrien.
The mayor believes she is going to announce for mayor.
The mayor’s people claim Adrien has been quietly, or not so quietly, testing the waters in West Everett.
The mayor’s gang members are said to be watching her closely.
Adrien, I believe, wants to run.
Once she gets over the stage fright of going for it, and she announces, she will be a difficult contender to deal with for the mayor.
I have written this before. I stand by it.
The mayor has an atomic bomb-sized problem if Capone and Adrien both run strong campaigns.
Winning the September primary will be that much more difficult for the mayor if there are two solid candidates against him.
The numbers don’t add up right for the mayor facing two candidates.
The mayor has to know his past will haunt him during this campaign with a Black woman running against him who he is inclined to hate.
Minorities will play a decisive role in the coming primary and the finale.
The mayor can point to all the great successes with new real estate developments and parks. At the same time, he will be hard-pressed to duck or to answer difficult questions about his unwillingness to hire Blacks and browns to city positions.
Then there are the difficult questions about the mayor’s past with a number of women who made claims against him for not just sexually harassing them but for attacking them.
These are dark difficulties that never go away. They can’t be swept under the rug.
Plus, the mayor never knows who might come out of the woodwork next to accuse him of poor behavior.
Remember, a Leopard never changes its spots.
If Capone and Adrien run, the mayor faces a difficult task. What a race it will be if DeMaria, Capone, and Adrien all run. What a race, indeed.