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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Reuven Carlyle, Feeling Good in Ballard

posted by on November 4 at 17:41 PM

Reuven Carlyle, the candidate opposing John Burbank in the tight race for the 36th District State Representative (in Ballard), spent Tuesday radiating charisma from the corner of 15th and Market. He kicked up his legs. He called out to children in backseats, who responded by giggling and hiding their faces. You could hear him from blocks away, and the people seemed to dig it.

(We at the Stranger Election Control Board suggested he run for office.)

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“Whoo-hoo!” “Have a beautiful day!”

This woman, Melody Brown, told Carlyle she voted for him. “We met on my doorstep,” she said.

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Heather Jacobo, carrying her four-week old son Sebastian, also told Carlyle she voted for him. He cooed over Sebastian. “I have four [children], so I’m a professional,” he said. “I know,” she said. “I saw that in the booklet. I like your energy.”

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Carlyle took exception with Burbank’s characterization earlier today to the SECB of Carlyle as the wealthy candidate backed by restaurants and other businesses that might want to pull back Burbank’s attempts to keep the minimum wage up. “I stand strongly for a strong minimum wage,” Carlyle said. “That’s just a silly statement.”

Carlyle said the biggest difference between him and his opponent is Carlyle’s passion for environmental issues. (Carlyle, who was endorsed by the SECB, is on the board of a company that works on the electric car grid. He also pointed out that he believes in an open waterfront along the viaduct rather than a retrofit.) “I think I’m bigger on the environment,” Carlyle said. “It’s just in my DNA and it’s not in his DNA to lead on that.”

It was hard to talk much to him with everybody stopping to talk to the gregarious candidate. A white-haired guy walking by called out, “You got one today!” “So you’re the one!” Carlyle shot back. A woman in a wheelchair stopped to tell a long story that we only caught the tail end of (it sounded like it involved an athletic victory for an Ivy League school team from way back in the day).

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Carlyle promised to pick up his own campaign signs quickly because he sees them as environmental pollution. (He has a plan to give them to a woman who’s going to reuse them—they’re not recyclable). So he took a break from the street corner to pull one of his signs out of the ground.

Thief!

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RSS icon Comments

1

double post?

Posted by oops | November 4, 2008 5:46 PM
2

Nice guys do finish first once and a while. Congratulations to President-Elect Obama and Representative-Elect Carlyle! And congrats to McCain and Burbank for a hard fought race. John, thanks for offering your opponenets coffee yesterday at the competitive, that was classy.

Now the mud-slinging can end for six and half minutes and all those mean, guilt-by-association, "what can we make stick to this terrific guy?" dogs can go back to being bores at cocktail parties instead of projecting it onto the Stranger's Slog!

Posted by schoolguy | November 5, 2008 7:13 AM

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