That's not how I read this endorsement at all. Every candidate, if you're honest about it, comes with both positives and negatives. 60% of the editorial board felt that Johnson's positives outweighed his negatives more than any other candidate's did—and I respect that. It's a fair judgment based on consistent criteria.<br><br>What makes me a lot <i>more</i> nervous is when there's no "lesser of the evils" thinking going on at all—when people think they've found themselves a messiah who has all positives and no negatives. Because nobody's perfect. What I hear from Johnson supporters, now and in 2009 and 2005, is that he's not perfect but he's the best choice; what I hear from many Lee supporters, and what I heard from Crisler supporters in 2009 and Melton supporters in 2005, is that their candidate <i>is</i> completely without negative attributes and that the choice should be obvious to everyone, without analysis.<br><br>So, yeah: give me a "lesser of the 5 evils" analysis any day. I'm voting for Lumumba, and I'm proud to do it, but it's reasonable to look at the speeches he gave when he was younger, or the ambitiousness of his policy proposals, and weigh those into the equation. That's what journalists are supposed to do.

Immediate takeaways:<br><br>- Hate pays. Lee spent nearly as much advertising on Jackson Jambalaya ($800) as he did on the Clarion Ledger ($965)—the same amount he spent on the Northside Sun ($800).<br>- This is where the Republican support really becomes visible: another $2,500 from Leland Speed, to go with the $1,000 he already gave Jackson 20/20. And, strangely enough, $1,000 from Joel Bomgar(!).<br>- There are still some GOP names that are conspicuously absent from this donor list, and they're folks who haven't visibly backed another candidate, so we should be on guard for another PAC next month if Lee makes the runoff.

Could there be any connection between Perry and Bluntson's cryptic comment about having already promised the police chief spot to someone who used to work for the department?

Two questions come to mind:<br><br>- Is our mayor saying that 90% of JPD isn't unionized? Assuming that's true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), that isn't good news for a lot of reasons. (Undercuts JPOA's credibility, certainly, but it also makes me wonder who's looking out for the officers.)<br><br>- My understanding is that Chief Coleman plans to <a href="http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/20…">retire later this year</a> anyway (assuming that's when her initial four years are up). If that's still the case, isn't a change in JPD administration pretty much inevitable? Why is JPOA pushing to replace a chief who will have retired before the next mayoral administration, regardless of the outcome of the election?

Good thing Jackson 20/20 didn't run a candidate against Whitwell in Ward 1; that would have really upset their donor base.

This is only tangentially related, but did Dunn ever get around to processing those 10,000 NAACP voter registration forms she was dragging her feet on last year?

I don't mind the business judgments, but I do mind the lies. He has been describing himself as a business owner for the duration of the campaign; now he's suddenly saying he's not a business owner, and hasn't been for years. What's more, he has been very carefully hiding this pretty significant part of his story, re the default judgments, rather than handling them in a transparent way—and seems to be giving as little information to the media as possible.<br><br>I wish some of these young candidates would read <i>King Lear</i> and realize that the people who come to them with legitimate questions and honest concerns shouldn't be treated like their enemies just because they're not giving them the fawning, uncritical acceptance they think they deserve.<br><br>I asked Lee a few questions about his views on some civil liberties policy issues a few weeks back, which would have given him an easy way to promote himself as a progressive, and was pretty bluntly dismissed (as a "biased observer") by his campaign because I had previously been critical of his decision to advertise on a local right-wing blog. That's unfortunate. When you've got a long persona-non-grata list before you've even made the runoff, much less been elected to office, that's a recipe for cronyism down the road. We saw it with Melton, and we'll probably see it with Lee if he's elected. Not looking forward to that.

hotrodrobert writes: <i>"Unfortunately we are headed toward single payer ,socialist type of health care. It has never worked anywhere it has been tried..."</i><br><br>That's categorically false.

Your homework assignment is to look at this list of countries by life expectancy (we rank #40)...<br>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co…<br>

...and count the number of countries in the top 39 that have a "single payer, socialist type of health care [system]" (hint: nearly all of them).<br><br>We can disagree about how the Unites States can catch up with the rest of the industrialized world in healthcare outcomes, but it really is a matter of catching up. We're no superpower when it comes to healthcare, despite a GDP and per capita income that suggests we really should be.<br><br>It makes sense to look at countries that are doing a better job of this than we are, then go and do likewise—unless we're happy with the prospect of [killing 45,000 people every year][1] out of sheer racial resentment. (And please don't pretend that isn't where the opposition to Obamacare comes from, because we both know better.)

[1]: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2…

I can vouch for polls being done; somebody (well, somebody's computer) phoned me a month or two ago and asked me to rate Johnson, Lee, Quinn, and Lumumba on a scale of 1-5. Also asked me to prioritize various issues, though I can't remember the details. Didn't see any results coming out of that, so I assumed it was an internal campaign poll.

I'm guessing the five candidates are Johnson, Lumumba, Lee, Quinn, and Bluntson; is that right?