By JOSH RESNEK
The story was recently told of city employees in various departments being ordered to hold signs for the mayor’s re-election effort.
Some employees explained that they had family duties to tend to or little league games to watch or recreation summertime things to do.
“Hold the signs, or else,” they were apparently told, the Leader Herald has been informed by several city employees who wished to remain unnamed for fear of reprisal.
So those employees did what any sane city employee would do, they held signs when they didn’t want to.
A sign holding in Everett Square early Monday morning brought out a dozen or so city employees and others answering the call to hold the mayor’s signs.
We don’t pretend to have our readers believe the mayor called the sign holders to duty. The mayor does this through his underlings, department heads, and campaign organizers to meet the challenge of two serious contenders.
Saturday morning, mayoral hopeful Gerly Adrien’s forces held a sign rally in Everett Square.
No one was required to hold a sign by me, she said.
“I figured maybe 20 would come out,” Adrien told the Leader Herald.
“It’s time for a change.” – Bill Doyle
More than 75 men and women of all colors and races came out to rally for Adrien in the square.
They filled all four corners.
The rally was made more of a political event by the great number of automobiles passing by their drivers blowing their horns long and hard and waving at the sign holders for Adrien.
This was palpably missing from the mayor’s early efforts so far.
It is difficult to conjure up real intensity when the people holding the signs are forced to do so, and the folks driving by in the square are mostly those who have no connection to the mayor or his race for another term.
The voting demographic in Everett has morphed into the majority-minority population that dwarfs all others in the city.
Adrien’s Saturday rally in the square was about things to come.
The mayor’s Monday morning shoutout with conscripted labor holding the signs was par for the course.
He will have the numbers. But the passion isn’t there.
“It’s time for a change,” said Walnut Street resident Bill Doyle as he held an Adrien sign and waved to passersby on Broadway Saturday morning.
Doyle, who’s lived on Walnut Street for seven decades repeated himself.
“It’s time for a change.”