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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Politics Next: Jessie Israel Challenges Nick Licata

Posted by Dominic Holden on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 12:20 PM

If you haven't had a chance yet, check out yesterday's brawl between City Attorney Tom Carr and challenger Pete Holmes in Electionland. All their answers are eternally archived*, so if Holmes is elected and he undertakes a single pot case, you can hold his feet to his own commitment to stop all city pot prosecutions. Many thanks to the the candidates, and the scads of folks who asked questions. A special shout-out to prolific Electionland contributors Phil M and Joe.

But in the next five weeks before the general election, Electionland will host seven more debates: including mayor, and all four city-council races on the ballot. Up next Wednesday is a contentious race for city council. Jessie Israel, a fierce 35-year-old, is trying to unseat 97-term incumbent Nick Licata. She says he's been on the council too long and obstructs good projects. Israel is heavy on public-safety funding and favors building the deep-bore tunnel. Licata is a liberal's liberal—and if you don't know about him by now, you've been living under under a rock.

Begin asking Israel and Licata questions NOW! You can ask them anything you like**. You can also vote thumbs up on the best questions, increasing democratic pressure on candidates to answer them. They'll be answering your questions on Wednesday, October 7 from 1:00 to 3: 00 p.m.

Also, we'll be tweaking the design of Electionland to make it easier to ask questions and read the answers. So If you've got suggestions, put 'em in comments.

* Until we reach peak internet.

** Electionland is intended as a tool for people who have questions, answers, and things to say. We may remove questions, answers, and comments that are hateful, abusive or bigoted, trolling, deceitful, vague, confusing or generally nonsensical, personal attacks, spam, and any other crap that's inappropriate that we haven’t thought of yet.

Comments (11) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

First it said, "42-term incumbent Nick Licata," and now after refreshing it says, "97-term incumbent Nick Licata." Either way, that's definitely too long.

Posted by Dexter on October 1, 2009 at 12:31 PM

@ 1) He served 55 terms in the time you took to refresh the page.

Posted by Dominic Holden on October 1, 2009 at 12:42 PM

There is always the Wayback Machine if you reach peak internet.

That said, it's obvious someone needs to ask a hard hitting question about puppies and kittens ...

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 1, 2009 at 12:47 PM

@2 - did he have to change his underwear each time?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 1, 2009 at 12:48 PM

I've never seen a face that suggests "ready to gnaw" quite like hers.

Posted by gloomy gus on October 1, 2009 at 12:49 PM

Peak internet or no peak internet, the hive mind remembers.

Posted by rob!

on October 1, 2009 at 12:52 PM

@6 To steal from Anonymous...

WE ARE SLOG. WE ARE LEGION. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on October 1, 2009 at 1:30 PM

her ass is fat

Posted by not that there's anything wrong with that... on October 1, 2009 at 3:28 PM

his head is bald and he looks like skeletor

Posted by but with yellower teeth on October 1, 2009 at 4:56 PM

suggestion: Allow readers to refresh a page with answered questions sorted in reverse chronological order. When I attempted to do that during the City Attorney event using Firefox 3.0.14, "latest" remained selected, but the list was instead filtered by "greatest", and I couldn't select "latest".

Posted by Phil M

on October 7, 2009 at 9:09 AM

suggestion: For questions that require a yes/no answer, require participants to check either a "yes" or a "no" box (or maybe allow them to check a "maybe" box), then to elaborate on their answers. Do similar for multiple choice answers.

The majority of questions asked so far, with Carr/Holmes and Licata/Israel, have resulted not in answers, but in short position statements that are sometimes related to the question. Please don't give candidates the chance to say whatever they'd like when they don't want to answer a question. If someone won't answer, let's make it clear that he or she did not do so.

Posted by Phil M

on October 7, 2009 at 7:09 PM