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| 16.10.13 01:15 | | 20 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION DAY - MAYORAL CANDIDATE #30: CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW (COUNT ALL RANKINGS) Sparrow is the former Charles David Viebahn - he decided on the name change last year, a day after being charged with trespassing coming out of some Occupy activity - he pled down to a misdemeanor and is currently on probation. (Fortunately, no felonies - so he's qualified to run for mayor!) He grabbed all the early oxygen from the filing period by virtue of his name and outfit and the fact that the AP reporter was extremely lazy that day. Although listing an address in Bancroft on his filing, Sparrow (a young looking 62) is a squatter at the moment - yet he was able to pay his AND Ms. Kelly's filing fees when they simultaneously went to Elections on 8/12 to file at the behest of Mr. Carney, who was along to document. (Both fees were paid in cash.) Due to recent requests from Occupy, he may not even be squatting in the same house anymore, as they were concerned with both his run for Mayor and that he may be "too rich" to occupy an Occupy house. All this sounds really silly. Sparrow has also blogged about his time in the Young Socialist Alliance, how he recognised the Socialist Workers' Party as a cult, and how he sees some of that cult-ness in Occupy. It does appear that for their part, Occupy split with Sparrow, essentially disowned him and asked him to never come near 'em again. Thus, Sparrow's "party or principle" belies his previous heavy involvement with Occupy and the movement to end homelessness - and it didn't hurt that Mr. Carney claims significant input in suggesting Sparrow's three words as well. "Count All Rankings" is a suggestion that only allowing three rankings in our RCV is disenfranchising to way too many voters; it's a notion with which I tend to sympathize. In our technological age, the fact that we can't see to come up with a system that allows us to rank more than three candidates is a little suspect. I found a blog entry written by Kristin Rafferty detailing some seriously scandalous (if true) behaviour from the former "Chuck from Occupy" - the words "massage" and "pimp" appear a few times - so as much fun as the AP can have calling out the guy with the funny name, perhaps it should be reiterated that it can be terribly dangerous to cast that #1 vote for someone when you know so little about the candidate beyond their name...whether that name be Captain Jack Sparrow or Christopher Robin Zimmerman. (For what it's worth, Rafferty offered up Mr. Wilson as someone deserving another look when preparing your rankings. I would respectfully disagree with her on this point.) In his Star Tribune profile, he mentions using eminent domain to get foreclosed/bank-owned houses occupied by the homeless, decriminalizing drugs and prostitution (or massages?) and getting a vote on the stadium in accordance with the City Charter. I'm actually down with most of that. The only thing I'm not sure about is the eminent domain thing, but after reading more about Jaymie Kelly it's starting to sound like ...not the worst idea? (Having said all that...not sure how much of that the mayor can actually get done, but as always, the mayor can definitely get the conversations started.) I honestly can't tell you if I'd be a better mayor than this guy or not, but I feel fairly certain that I would. Am I right or wrong? It's YOUR vote! NEXT: One more homeless guy, who may or may not have also been bankrolled by Mr. Sparrow |