Fort Lauderdale Elections

Elections are coming up for the City of Fort Lauderdale. If you are like me, you are tied of the flyers on your door and commercials on cable for for the candidates.

Elections for the city are odd. They are held off-cycle after the national election. This creates less voting interest and lower turn-out. Just as bad is the fact that it costs tax payers extra money. (Will any of the candidates support moving them to November? That would be one of my campaign promises if I ever ran.)

Second odd thing is that they are non-partisan. In the city I lived in before, mayor candidates declared their party. Here they are allowed mask their true political beliefs to a certain extent.

The Sun Sentinel voiced their opinion this morning on the candidates. They supported two incumbents for city commission and two with developer ties. For mayor they supported a candidate who has been in state politics for a long time.

Here are my thoughts:

• Mayor - It is a toss up for me between Rossi and Seiler. Both have sound ideas but neither really excite me. I also do not know where they stand on some issues. Most of the candidates talk about being fiscal conservatives but who really knows. The issue of free passes for developers is one of things that concerns me. Seiler had to move into Fort Lauderdale (from Wilton Manors) to be eligible to run. Rossi's primary campaigning method seems to be bus benches for his law firm. The third leading candidate is a former military officer who did not state that he was retired in campaign literature (which is supposed to do).

• Commission District 4 - Romney Rogers - He is probably the most like my personal views and does not appear to be connected with developers. One opponent sent a flyer stating he would encourage the right kind of development yet a meet the candidate party was co-sponsored by one of the "McMansion" builders in Rio Vista. The third candidate sent a flyer stating that he was capping his personal funding of his campaign at $10K for a $4K position - that does not add up. What is his motivation? It is probably not in our best interest.

It is important to get out and exercise our right to vote. In these tough times we need good representatives to help manage the government through these tough times.