Carter Wrenn posted on February 25, 2008 18:02
You can’t help but be intrigued – if by nothing else – by the irrationality of local politics.
The last three elections Mayor Meeker has swept himself, and his allies, into office as no-growth, anti-evil developer, pro-sugar plum fairy candidates.
But now we learn – from a charter-member of the Mayor’s anti-growth club – liberal activist-blogger Lunsford Lane (a pen-name) the Mayor’s secretly been marching in lockstep with developers for years. He’s not against them. He’s for them. In fact, he’s helping them on the City Council right now – as opposed to, say, Councilman Thomas Crowder, a true scourge of anyone who wants to build anything bigger than a hatbox.
For instance – according to Mr. Lane – it turns out the drought is an example of the Mayor cozying up to developers at everyone else’s expense. Lane reports developers are ‘dancing a jig’ because Meeker gutted the Phase 2 water restrictions to let them go on building new sub-divisions that add “literally THOUSANDS of new homes” to Raleigh’s overtaxed water system – which will be bone dry by summer.
Lane adds that the no-growth (or as little growth as possible) crowds support of Meeker has “been a rocky-marriage from the get-go, with Meeker promising his fidelity to us Citizens, but time and time again caught in bed with Big Real Estate.” And that the Mayor’s “made his choice – he’s leaving us and the kids and shacking up with Big Real Estate… The only thing left to do is file the papers. Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E became final today.”
And Lane is not just mad he’s getting even: He’s launching a drive to get 5638 people to sign petitions to recall the Mayor.
So there you have it. Local politics in a nutshell.
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