Someone came up with the strategy that the winning message in Norfolk City Council races would be to spend a lot more money on schools, while not mentioning where the money would come from.
Incumbents Barclay Winn and Angelia Williams support a 2% raise for school employees, but challengers mostly want to throw even more money at education to win against Winn and Williams.
The Virginian-Pilot focuses on the three pandering proposals from Winn’s three vote-splitting challengers.
Leftwing attack journalist Jesse Scaccia is ticked off that there haven’t been four raises in the last four years for school employees.
“Not getting raises for four years is saying, ‘We don’t respect you.’ “
To liberals, handing people money is a sign of respect. Doesn’t matter how good a job they do, mind you. He supports raises to government workers so they don’t feel insulted.
John Amiral makes Scaccia look like a cheapskate with his proposal of a 20% raise to teachers.
“Our city will pay teachers more than any other city in Hampton Roads,” he said.
Somehow, the way to pay for all this didn’t make the story or the forum where the statements were made. (Perhaps they’ll comment here).
Marcus Calabrese didn’t jump into the vote-buying bidding war, but his answer was to get a new superintendent, but discriminate against anyone who didn’t already live in Norfolk.
He called for “somebody in Norfolk who is willing to be a Norfolk superintendent. If you have that, you’ll have a much better relationship.”
Is Randy Wright available?
Pandering with public dollars to buy votes isn’t exactly a new thing in politics. But to be so brazen about it even took me aback for a second. We’ll see how it works.
Everyone seemed to support replacing the appointed School Board with an elected one, and Bearing Drift always likes more elections.
Almost as much as we love skewering liberals using the peoples’ money to buy votes from them.
