The two candidate forums -- Monday's and tomorrow's -- provide the best basis for making that kind decision, but there are some obstacles in the way. At Monday's KDH/Exchange Club forum, the questions directed to the 16 candidates were poorly chosen in that they either encouraged general answers or required far more detailed answers than the speakers were given time for. You can see the interviews on Dan Kott's Eyes Of Killeen YouTube channel. Tomorrow's LULAC/NAACP forum, if it continues the pattern of Wednesday's School Board/Mayor forum, will feature better questions but will not be videotaped because of the inadequate venue.
Several of the sixteen probably eliminated themselves on Monday by their inability to coherently answer even the easiest questions. This says nothing about the people themselves, just about how they performed on stage. The candidates I mentally eliminated based on their answers at that forum are
- Nathan Small
- Milton Powell
- Abe Amir
- JoAnn Demonbreun
- Mike Gamel
That still leaves 11 who, although they did not cover themselves in glory, at least survived my first cut.
From here on, the ante goes up. Some of my high-level elimination criteria are going to be
- Did the candidate talk about integrity and transparency when asked about policy? I'm unlikely to favor a candidate who avoids other issues by beating on those drums.
- Did the candidate dwell on the past rather than look to the future?
- Did the candidate seem to understand fundamental concepts of city government? Did he or she talk intelligently about finance, budgeting, borrowing, taxing, zoning, long-range planning, grants, regional govenment alliances, health insurance, fleet maintenance, buy versus lease, make versus buy....
- Does the candidate make him or herself available? Is there a web site? A Facebook page?
When I have the field narrowed to 6 or 7 candidates, I plan to talk to each of them. I'll post the gist of the conversations here.
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