Those Campaigning Greenwald Sisters
by Jon Li
The long looming city council campaign of Cecilia Escamellia Greenwald blossomed this week in all its glory. Never bashful, her sense of justice exceeded only by her self-confidence, Cecilia claimed this week that she has support from the law enforcement community. It makes one marvel at which one of the Greenwalds has less of a grounding in reality.
The prospects of the line up for next year’s city council race are:
- Rob Roy trying to get a laugh for how absurd the whole thing is;
- Sue Greenwald claiming that the biggest problem with government is that nobody will listen to her, or work with her, or do what she thinks, even though she hasn’t accomplished anything positive in seven years on the council;
- Stephen Souza claiming whatever he thinks you want to hear;
- Don Saylor trying to appear modest and reasonable;
- and Cecilia hoping to knock off one of the incumbents.
Because of Cecilia’s husband David’s last name, there is this amazing political marriage between Cecilia, David, and Sue.
My central theory of electoral politics is that 1% of the people pay attention to everything, 5% read the paper every day, know when the council meets, follow the issues, and often have an opinion about the issues as they come before the council, 25% say they are good citizens who decide before the election who they are going to vote for, and 50% were paying enough attention that they ask the 25% who to vote for during the last week before the election (and the other 50% couldn’t care less). The key to winning an election is getting the attention of the 5%, who move the 25%.
The 5% are going to have a hard time keeping straight the difference between Sue, Cecilia, and David. Because of David’s infamous blog, the Davis Vanguard, David is going to be having a running commentary on how the election is playing, and he is going to have a hard time taking a back seat to his wife, even if she is writing it, or dictating it.
The best campaigner in recent memory was Susie Boyd, who I never supported in an election. Susie would pick three or four very uncontroversial campaign points, and stick to them. When asked a question, she would say as little as possible, knowing that her friends were working to gain her support, and there was nothing she could do to gain votes by saying something that would offend anyone. (Stephen Souza is going to try to run that kind of campaign, but he doesn’t have nearly the work-hard-to-support-him friends that Susie had. Stephen is going to have to rely on his own boundless energy, his superficial good will, his extensive knowledge of what he claims the city does, and hope that people will vote for him because he is the incumbent and will probably again get the Enterprise’s endorsement.)
As demonstrated in the previous paragraph, I am so the opposite from Susie that perhaps you can see why I marvel at her campaign discipline.
The problem with a city council race, as Cecilia and David are going to find out, is that there are many issues, and little to be gained and lots to be lost by each additional issue. David is going to want to use the limitless space of his blog to THOROUGHLY pontificate on every single thing that emerges, even with this warning well in advance. Who knows what February issue will turn out to be hot in May, like last election, the way Lamar, Bill Ritter and Don Winters attempted to paint Ruth Asmundson as part of the racist city council for not cracking down on the police department, with the hopes of electing Pat Lenzi Yolo County District Attorney over the law enforcement support of Jeff Reisig.
Manufactured issues like that usually happen in ways beyond the individual candidate’s control, and David is going to do everything he can to spin the issues so that Cecilia comes out ahead.
Sue Greenwald has a whole different set of concerns in her bid for a third term. On the one hand, there is a giant constellation of reasons why the voters will quickly characterize the race as Sue & Cecilia versus Stephen & Don: Don and Stephen supported Covell Village and Target, and the Police Department, and growth, and they are members of the Establishment (although Stephen would have you believe that he is really a progressive, in hopes that the progressives will give Stephen their third vote). So it will be easy for Sue and Cecilia to point at Don and Stephen as the problem with the council, and please don’t vote for them, and I am not the problem, they are.
But the reason why Sue was successfully elected in 2000, and re-elected in 2004, is because she was hidden behind the reality of her campaign manager, Pam Gunnell, who is thoughtful, meaningful, and gets along with people. But being in the limelight as mayor has been a golden opportunity, that she has mostly taken advantage of.
She has been helped a lot by Enterprise city beat reporter Claire St. John, who
was a creative writing major at UCD, and has very little political experience or breadth of awareness, so she writes down whatever an elected official says, as though it is true, especially Sue Greenwald. So when Sue doesn’t like something, St. John turns it into a cogent sentence, what I call sanitization. St. John writes as though it is unfair that Sue should have to gain three votes of the council to accomplish her wishes. She writes as though Sue actually wants to do something rather than just complain.
The problem this next election is that Sue is going to be in the spotlight during the campaign, the spotlight she has relished and demanded, and she can mention more issues in a rambling monologue than most people can think of.
To me, the most interesting thing about the upcoming election will be to see how much Sue and Cecilia try to distinguish themselves from each other.
Post Script:
Election results: Don Saylor came in first, Stephen Souza came in second, and Sue Greenwald came in third for the three seats, Sydney Virgus came in fourth, Cecilia came in fifth, and Rob Roy came in sixth.
