A sure sign that the city election season is heating up: On Thursday, June 18th, from 5 to 7 p.m., Patrice Robinson, a candidate for city council, District 3, and Mary Wilder, candidate for the council’s District 5, were scheduled to be holding simultaneous fund-raisers at private residences in different parts of town. (Late update: the Robinson fundraiser was canceled.)
This comes a night after more or less simultaneous events involving a joint appearance of Mayor A C Wharton and challenger Jim Strickland at a taped interview event at Playhouse on the Square, as well as a meet ‘n greet event for City Council candidate Mickell Lowery (Super District 8, Position 3) at The Tennessee Brewery.
An attendee at the Lowery event was John Marek, who, as a preview to his own formal announcement for Council District 5, released an elaborate campaign platform calling, inter alia, for a lowery property tax, city/county consolidation, decriminalization of marijuana, and restoration of reduced benefits for police and fire employees.
Overlapping events and campaign manifestations of this sort, still relatively uncommon, will at a certain point in the election cycle, become routine. And that point, very likely, is in the near future.
JB