Adrien, Capone, mayor going door to door
By JOSH RESNEK
May has just turned to June, an unlikely time in this city for mayoral candidates to be jousting with one another.
Yet this is exactly what is now taking place.
Gerly Adrien, Fred Capone, and the mayor are all involved in more highly accelerated campaign efforts at this early time in their race for mayor.
The mayor has begun campaigning door to door in several neighborhoods. There is nothing perfunctory about the mayor when he campaigns.
He has already organized the apparatus of the city government to tout his accomplishments and performance. He has opened his campaign headquarters although it is not presently being used.
The mayor is not taking anything for granted.
Adrien has set the early pace with dogged, every day, door-to-door canvassing of the city’s neighborhoods.
She was the first to turn in her signatures, a very early and impressive show of organization.
Her online money-raising efforts have been impressive. They have intensified. Over the long weekend, she apparently raised many more thousands of dollars. She is likely holding about $80,000 at this point in her campaign account.
Capone is running at full speed from meeting to meeting with supporters reaching out to me “who I never dreamt of in a million years would back me,” he told the Leader Herald Friday morning, during a chance meeting at the Common Ground café on the Parkway.
Capone, too, is raising money and campaigning in the city’s squares and door to door.
He is right now fitting out an off-Broadway headquarters in Everett Square.
All the campaigning this early has been contagious in political circles throughout the city.
For the first time in twelve years, the mayor has two serious opponents who are well funded and organized who have voting bases of their own.
The last time the mayor faced an opponent was former Councilor, Robert Van Campen.
The mayor beat Van Campen by a wide margin in a race that was never in question.
This time around, Adrien and Capone represent a double threat to the mayor’s desire to be re-elected for yet another term.
The threat isn’t just that they are running. Rather, they both command strong voting bases of several thousand voters each. They both have the money it takes to wage a real run.
The mayor’s voting base is perhaps the largest.
However, with about 7000 residents coming out to vote in the primary in September – a figure predicted by City Clerk Sergio Cornelio – the mayor is not assured of what has come before.
The improbable are many.
If Adrien and Capone were to score a vote of 2500 each, this leaves 2000 votes for the mayor.
In such a scenario, the mayor cannot top the primary ticket let alone survive the primary.
If the mayor scores 3500 votes, neither Capone nor Adrien can beat him although one of them will face him in the citywide runoff in November as a result of coming in second.
It is highly unlikely both Capone or Adrien will score less than 2500 votes each. Such a vote total would leave the mayor out of the November election.
Bottom line, Adrien and Capone pose a problem for the mayor by themselves and together.
Neither Adrien nor Capone are taking the mayor for granted.
They both know how strong he is perceived to be.
In interviews with Adrien and Capone, the mayor’s perceived strength means nothing to them.
They are both committed to campaigns designed to unseat him.
As for the mayor and his crew – they don’t believe he can lose.
“He will be the mayor forever,” several of his closest supporters have told the Leader Herald.