Honestly, I voted for Mike McGinn. I did so because he seemed much smarter, frankly, than his opponent. Having a dumb mayor certainly seems bad. But smarty pants has unfortunately decided that being an outsider is what he wants to be, and that he would like to go back to being a gadfly instead of being mayor.
He laid the groundwork by alienating the city council on the seawall issue and coming off as a guy who doesn't play well with others.
He finished the job on April 22 by vetoing Tim Burgess's anti-aggressive panhandling measure, which said that people, in the words of the PI, "can't block someone, use threatening or aggressive gestures or profane language, solicit someone using an ATM or repeatedly solicit someone who has already said 'no.'"
Seems pretty reasonable and inoffensive, no?
McGinn then brought together all the ACLU and other apparatchiks, who represent about 5% of the vote, to celebrate his veto. This is going to go down very poorly in the next election. You can't completely abandon the regular person. And the regular person wants to be able to walk around downtown without being accosted.
The rest of McGinn's term will be a lame duck waiting game trying to figure out who the next mayor will be. Perhaps Tim Burgess?
