When you have to say it, say it in BOLD (The Next Mayor)

Ouch. Tom Knox takes a whoopin' from the City Paper:

Are you willing to present to City Council a proposal to put a cap on rents in Philadelphia and work toward a "bill of rights" for tenants?

—Jim Weber, Roxborough

After two weeks of phone and e-mail inquiries, and an in-person meeting between a CP staffer and a campaign spokesperson, Tom Knox declined to respond.

The italics is so that you know I'm citing someone else's work. The bold is actually in the web version of the City Paper.

How hard would it be to throw up some boilerplate answer, even if it's "no" and an explanation?

Put this together with candidate Fattah's hesitancy to release his financial records and we start to get a picture of what the media relations of some of the candidates will be like once they become mayor.

Considering that media relations has been a major weakness of the current mayor and could be used as an explanation as to why he has had a hard time getting broad support for his own programs, we should definitely pay attention to how the candidates deal with the media as things heat up down the stretch.

(edited to add, 4/2/07) In the comments for this post, Knox spokesperson, Susan Madrak, explains why candidate Knox did not answer the question posed by the City Paper.

Comments (4)

Anonymous:

Rent caps are a TERRIBLE idea. If a landlord is forced to rent a place for below-market rates, (hence having a surplus of renters), why on earth would they take care of the place? It would be just throwing away money. It's economics 101. Rent caps are only a slightly less of effective means of destroying a city then bombing it.

Posted by Anonymous | March 30, 2007 12:33 PM

Dave

I'm with Dan on this one, although he forgot about Brady:

http://blogs.phillynews.com/dailynews/nextmayor/2007/02/straight_shooter_or_shoot_stra.html

Posted by Dave | March 30, 2007 1:43 PM

Agree that both should have answered the question, preferably with my answer above :)

Posted by Anonymous | March 30, 2007 3:34 PM

karen:

Good point, Dan, that "we start to get a picture of what the media relations of some of the candidates will be like once they become mayor."

Willingness to be open about tax returns is one indication of the candidate’s leadership style.

I doubt if Fattah has anything to hide or anything to lose by releasing his tax returns. If I were one of his advisors/ supporters, I’d encourage him to release the returns (edited to conceal his wife's salary) and be done with it. Why give opponents an issue? Fattah loses nothing, but the citizens of Philly lose a lot if one of the major candidates for mayor gets away with not releasing his tax returns.

Posted by karen | March 30, 2007 9:14 PM

Comments (4)

Post a comment