When I took high school civics, and when I studied history, I was taught that the people who lead our country, our states and our cities were people elected by the public, and as such, represented the views of the public.
So how'd it come to be that our politicians no longer represent the views of the general public?
Don't believe me? For this election, I sent out an email questionaire regarding animal welfare issues for our group Kansas City Dog Advocates. It was a short questionaire, 7 questions. I received it back from about 1/2 of the candidates prior to the primary. After the primary, I sent out the questionaire to anyone who made the general election. I received 2 more questionaires. So of the 24 candidates running for office in Kansas City, MO, only 12 filled out the questionaire -- given two requests to do so.
Our group is small (although we represent thousands of dog lovers throughout the city that are not members of our group). We just represent concerned citizens with no money (only votes) to good candidates.
How is it that group of voting citizens is no longer worth even responding to and acknowledging they exist?
From my reading of other blogs and what-not, it sounds like my experience is not isolated. It sounds like a LOT of people have run into the same problem with the same candidates. Since when do constituents no longer matter? Many of the people who were most responsive (Mark Forsythe, Pam Mason, Ezekiel Amador, Garrett Denzer, John Tancredi, Deth Im, Henry Klein), didn't make it past the primaries. Why do we, as citizens, continue to elect people to office that won't listen or respond to our requests even prior to getting elected? They will NOT listen more once they are in office. If they'll only responde to the requests of the big money, highly influential people when the NEED VOTES, there is no reason to believe that they'll care one iota about Joe Citizen's opinion once in office.
I've also done my due dilligence, and studied everyone's missions, goals, and ideas once elected. It is little coincidence that the people who responded to my questionaire also seem to share a lot of my same beliefs on what will make this city better. People who share the beliefs of an ordinary joe citizen = the people who are willing to communicate with ordinary joe citizen...without any strings attached.
So with that, I offer up the candidates I support:
Mayor - Mark Funkhouser
2nd In-District - Russ Johnson
3rd In-District - Just leave blank
3rd District at-large - Dee Williams
4th In-District - Jan Marcason
4th District At-Large - Doug Gamble
5th In-District - leave blank
6th in-District - Darrell Curls
6th at-large - leave blank
Sadly, I think the Dictionary.com definition of a "Politician" is becoming far too common: "a seeker or holder of public office, who is more concerned about winning favor or retaining power than about maintaining principles"
Let's be sure that the candidates we elect represent the ideals of the public. To do that,they would actually have to listen and RESPOND to the public they are supposed to represent.
That's the way I learned it was supposed to work. I would really like to see it become that way again.
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