After several joint appearances with his Democratic rival, GOP mayoral nominee Al Taubenberger appears to have honed down his message. In an interview with The Evening Bulletin, Taubenberger does a nice job of finally explaining what distinguishes him from Michael Nutter:
"I don't think very many people can say, 'Job well done,'" Taubenberger said of the decades of Democratic rule, saying a stronger two-party system would go a long way toward chipping away at corruption in City Hall.
"I think there are issues that need to be raised that only someone with my perspective can do," he added. "It has to come from outside. It has to come from a Republican. It has to come from someone who has not been in power, because you think outside the box. You're more open to ideas and not beholden to so many different special interest groups."
Essentially, he's saying that even though Nutter ran as the candidate of "change" and won. He, Taubenberger, is even changier. What he fails to mention, however, is that his own party is not immune to being beholden to special interests groups and getting what they can for their own people out of the city government.
For now, I'm willing to give Al the benefit of the doubt. He personally doesn't seem to owe anything to anyone and he seems like an honest, down-to-earth guy. But it'll take a lot to convince me that because his party happens to have been out of power for the past 50 years, it's not enjoying some of the leftovers of patronage and pay-to-play.
Heck, if that were the case, they would have nominated Sam Katz to fill in for Frank Rizzo in 1991 or their three councilmembers would have taken the lead in advocating for all of the ethics legislation that came down in the wake of the federal investigation.
So he's got a message... "changier."
Comments (2)
More like "REAL Change" to me!
Posted by Anonymous | August 20, 2007 4:09 PM
He's got my vote! It's just a darn shame the news media has annointed Mr Nutter, whatever happened to equal time for political candidates?
Posted by ejm604 | August 20, 2007 10:24 PM