Perhaps Cahill — and here I’m quoting him again — had the best closing line. “Whichever of this four gets it, may God have mercy on him,” he said, to loud applause.
On us, too.
Residents will get one last look at the candidates collectively on Saturday, Oct. 29 at 10 a.m. at City Hall. League of Women Voters will preside.
Kingston notes
“How’d I do?” Polacco asked me in the parking lot afterward. “Not bad,” I said, “but it’s a long way from a bumper sticker — Lower taxes! More Services! People Before Politics! — to a policy.”
Gallo was introduced by MC and chamber President Ward Todd as the city’s corporation counsel. Nobody corrected him. Gallo is an assistant corporation counsel.
Polacco repeatedly asserted he, Polacco, wasn’t “a backroom insider.” On the campaign trail, it’s more like he’s not Gallo.
Cahill urged listeners to “pick the candidate with the best plans” and got the most applause.
He’s usually hard to miss, but I didn’t see six-foot-four former mayoral candidate Hayes Clement in the audience. Buzz around is that Clement, a Ninth Ward alderman, may have a role in the Gallo administration. Peace feelers are everywhere. The former foes dined recently — on the well-heeled Clement’s tab, no doubt.
Eyes rolled in the crowd when Gallo suggested a commission be appointed “to determine if we’re over-assessed.” A few sentences later he said assessed values in the city had risen just 1 percent since the 2008 reval.
Cahill mistepped when he urged the audience to re-elect Republican District Attorney Holley Carnright, sitting at a table in the back. Palpable groans greeted this breach of chamber etiquette.
Pre-emptive strike
I avoid using words like always, never and unprecedented, but having covered almost every chamber breakfast over several decades I can’t remember anybody hijacking the event like the Hein administration did last week.
Diners, many of them early birds arriving well before the 7:30 a.m. announced start date, were just digging into their eggs and bacon when chamber chairman-elect Frank Flynn took the mike to announce a special presentation. It was 7:27 a.m.
Flynn told the still a-titter crowd that Hein and Deputy Executive Marshall Beckman would be briefing them on the executive’s plan for privatizing the Golden Hill health care center, announced Sept. 28.
The surprise presentation had obviously been well-orchestrated and coordinated with the chamber. Printed brochures were at each table space. Assistant budget director/house PR man J.J. Hanson was ready with a slide show to accompany Beckman. Hein was nowhere to be seen.
I thought the best part was when Beckman, plumbing the depths of sincerity, declared that in his “personal opinion” this was the best plan out there. In fact, it’s the only one.
