Huh, first time I am aware of mostly agreeing with Stauber, go figure.

If Donny, er, Mr. Ness and Bell are very close in the primary and both go through watch for a cakewalk for Ness in the end as he'll also grab all the votes going for Bye, Gilbert and most likely Bergson. (my ignorant 2 cents worth)

I mostly agree with your assessment, edgeways. The only fly in that ointment is that it is pretty much the very politically active who vote in primaries. Primary turnout is roughly 10% of a normal election and those 10% aren't going to be representative of the normal voting public.

It will be interesting to watch, but I do think that it will be the Don and the Bell who emerge from Sept. 11 and, I agree with you, that I think most people will rally around Don.

I agree with both of you on your analysis.

Fortunately for Ness, from my observations, the very politically active folks are not voting for Bergson. I think a high turnout overall would probably bennifit Bergson the most. I'm suprised by the amount of support Bergson still has but I don't think his supporters will turn out to the primary in nearly the numbers Ness, Bell and Gilbert's supporters will.

I bet many people who would otherwise support Bye or one of the trailing candidates will vote for Ness in the primary, and if Don gets through the first round he'll get almost all of Gilbert's voters and the majority of Bergson's and take a decisive victory in November.

I actually like Bergson, but he kind of shot himself in the foot with the whole

"I may be running... I'm not running... No wait I am running because the city council didn't get my back damn them!"

so one truly has to question his commitment at this point, a year or two into his tenure he was saying things along the lie of "I can say whatever I want because I won't get elected again". He's kind of like your clumsy, drunk uncle who is a great guy but doesn't always come across the best in social settings.

Speaking of clumsy, drunk uncles, what's the tag you used to indent that quote?

And if anything's made me change my mind, it was that baby kissing photo on the front page yesterday!

the tag is [blockquote] .... [/blockquote], where [ and ] is really the greater and lesser signs of course