Stanford for mayor of P-town? You bet

By Phil Stanford

The Portland Tribune, Dec 10, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

And so it is, my fellow citizens, after much soul-searching and thoughtful deliberation with trusted advisers, not just at Nick’s Famous Coney Island but at Wimpy’s, home of the Wimpy Burger, I stand before you to announce my candidacy for mayor of this great city.

But only, of course, if the so-called Clean Money bill gets slipped through the City Council, as I expect it will shortly after the first of the year when the new council is seated. If not, you can get yourself another guy.

Under the Clean Money bill, large sums of taxpayer money will be made available to political candidates to spend on their campaigns.

In the primary, for example, candidates for mayor, such as yours truly, will be eligible to receive $200,000 Ñ and all you’ve got to do to is get 1,000 people to give you $5 each and get them to sign their names on a piece of paper.

• • •

Personally, I expect it to be a snap, if only because each of my supporters will know, deep in their hearts, that I share their progressive ideals, as embodied in the the Clean Money bill.

Plus, of course, they’ll have a shot at landing a job on my campaign, which I plan to conduct from Maui.

Once I have collected my $200,000, I plan to fly about 10 of them Ñ chosen with utter impartiality by drawing names from a hat Ñ to campaign headquarters in the islands.

Say what you will about my tactics, but the government would clearly be out of line if it attempted to abridge my First Amendment rights by trying to tell me how to run a proper campaign. That’s the beautiful part of this.

Of course my campaign staff and I will spend a certain amount of time surfing, scuba diving and working on our tans. There’s nothing worse than an exhausted candidate when it comes down to election time, I always say.

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