Decision 2011
The following city council candidates interview, a joint project between the Tattler and The Secret News, is provided as a public service for Emeryville voters. Prospective council members answered 14 questions, most on urgent matters facing the city now and looming in the future.Three council seats are up for election and there are five candidates. The following candidates participated in the interview: Jacqueline (Jac) Asher, Ruth Atkin, Ken Bukowski and Michael Webber. Candidate Nora Davis didn't respond to repeated calls to participate.
Meet the Candidates 2011
Meet Jac Asher, Candidate For Emeryville City Council
The information below is based on personal interviews with the candidates and is either quoted directly or paraphrased (in the first person), with the exception of information in parentheses.
Who
Jacqueline (Jac) Asher, 40 married with two children (one enrolled in the Emeryville Child Development Center and one attending Anna Yates Elementary School). Educator PhD, UC Berkeley. She has lived four years in Emeryville.
Where
jacasher.com
What
(click here to continue to The Secret News)
The information below is based on personal interviews with the candidates and is either quoted directly or paraphrased (in the first person), with the exception of information in parentheses.
Who
Jacqueline (Jac) Asher, 40 married with two children (one enrolled in the Emeryville Child Development Center and one attending Anna Yates Elementary School). Educator PhD, UC Berkeley. She has lived four years in Emeryville.
Where
jacasher.com
What
- Development:
(click here to continue to The Secret News)
Why on earth would Nora Davis respond to a blog that has viciously tried every strategy to destroy her, including portraying her as dead and buried?
ReplyDeleteI know several folks who've been persuaded to her defense by The Tattler's smallness and ageism.
There is a reason why Ms Davis would want to participate in this interview: to inform the voters and celebrate democracy.
ReplyDeleteThe Tattler stands by each story posted about Mayor Davis and our opinion stories are visibly posted as opinion. If Emeryville citizens want to rally to the mayor's defense, then they should do so. Here at the Tattler, we are going to report on news that would interest Emeryville residents and we'll call shots as we see them.
Readers should know however, this story is a Secret News story, not a Tattler story. If the commenter wants to charge that The Secret News has been unfair to Mayor Davis, then they should do that.
Regarding the charge of "ageism"; The Tattler believes voters need to know about a candidates age if that candidate is the oldest to ever run for city council in Emeryville history, as is the case with Ms Davis. Voters have a right to know if a prospective candidate will be likely to finish their term or if they may be incapacitated. Since Ms Davis will be 88 at the end of the term should she get re-elected and since Ms Davis has been very ill recently, the voters need to know this information since Ms Davis has not been forthcoming about it herself. Should Ms Davis be re-elected again and not complete her term, the voters should know that the council could chose to appoint a replacement council member, as they have done in the past. This would effectively be a case of the voter's choice being directed to an entirely different person, unknown to them.
This information dissemination is a primary job of the press.
If you are the press, then this comment was written by Shakespeare!
ReplyDeleteThe press defined (Wikipedia):
ReplyDeletePress: The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public. These include print media (newspapers, newsmagazines), broadcast news (radio and television), and more recently the Internet (online newspapers, news blogs, etc.).
Luckily for us, the founding fathers knew enough to not set up a governmental abitrage to judge the legitimacy of the press. Otherwise in Emeryville "the press" would be limited to the Chamber of Commerce blog or other sources friendly to the city council majority. The founding fathers thought that dissenting views about government power are critical to a democracy. City Hall here in Emeryville could use a dose of that kind of wisdom.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure as to the point of constantly being critical of Nora Davis. By my count, she has more than 60 years of experience in business and governing - more than probably any other two members of the council put together. Before you write a critical piece about her age, consider that she is among the few people in Emeryville who can report from her own experience about America's Great Depression, Prohibition and the sinking of the Titanic. She's an institution of our city.
ReplyDeletePoint taken.
ReplyDelete