Bond….Julian Bond

Last night civil rights leader Julian Bond made his second appearance at SUNY Geneseo. His first was a speech he gave in 1968. Last night he gave the Wadsworth Lecture to a packed house at Wadsworth Auditorium.

One of the benefits of being the son of the founders of the Wadsworth Lecture is I get to have dinner with the speakers and get to know them on a more informal basis. I found Mr. Bond to be rather reserved and dignified in person. His quiet personality changed quite a bit, however, when he got on stage and uncorked a stemwinding speech filled with red meat for the more liberal members of the audience.

Bond’s tendency to bash Republicans has caused controversy for his organization. Wikipedia reports that in 2004 the IRS launched an investigation of the NAACP’s tax-exempt status because of a speech Bond gave critical of the Bush administration. The investigation concluded in 2006 with the finding that Bond had not violated the regulations.

Nevertheless, Bond was careful when asked by an audience member if he would endorse any candidate for President. “The NAACP is a non-partisan organization,” he intoned. “We do not support any political candidates.” He then allowed as how his wife, however, would be sending all of “his” money to Barack Obama!

Kind of sounds like the position of PDDG, which claims to be a non-political organization so that we don’t have to file financial disclosure statements and reveal our donors. We, however, prove our non-partisan position by having key members of our leadership supporting different candidates for supervisor!

That is why I was a little annoyed by a front-page headline in today’s LC News charging that PDDG had been involved in ambushing the incumbent candidates at last week’s forum. While there may have been members of PDDG involved in submitting some of the questions, I had nothing to do with it, and any members that did, were surely acting on their own or as part of a major party political operation, not for PDDG.

I was also annoyed that although the News found room for 12 political letters this week, many of which were longer than the usual 400 word limit, including one from each of the three Democratic candidates, they could not find room for the one letter actually supporting me that was submitted by Betsy O’ Mara. Luckily, however, I have a well-read web site and I will be posting Betsy’s letter there.

BTW The only candidate who took advantage of my invitation in yesterday’s blog to come to the house last night for a post-lecture reception was Wes. It pays to read Happy Trails!

A non-political day

The political sign has been removed from in front of my house and my campaign truck is parked around back, as we prepare to celebrate the 200th birthday of my great-great-great grandfather, General James S. Wadsworth today, at the house he built. The Wadsworth Guard re-enactors will be arriving soon to set up camp on the valley side of the house, with the general public invited to attend from noon to 5 pm.

The admission charge of $5 per person (or $10 per carload) will be donated to the General Wadsworth Statue Fund, which has been raising money to erect a local replica of the General’s statue that stands at Gettysburg. Since the total cost of that project approaches $100,000, we are hoping for a good turnout.

The highlight of the day will be a commemorative ceremony at 3 p.m. which will include remarks by SUNY Geneseo Historian (and Geneseo Democratic Party Chair) Judith Hunter and a recitation of the Gettysburg Address by another descendant of the General, my cousin Sidney Symington. One person who will not be giving a speech is me, although I will be leading house tours throughout the afternoon.

People of all political faiths and supporters of all local candidates (and even the candidates themselves) are invited to attend. Just leave your politics at home.

I love a parade!

For those of you who missed it, the Grand Parade on Saturday in honor of the 175th Anniversary of the Village of Geneseo was quite an event. For many, no doubt, the highlight of the day was the first-ever appearance of the Geneseo Rotary Club’s Marching Band under the able leadership of past-President Kurt Fletcher and featuring the fabulous drum team of Chris Rider and Corrin Strong!

Although I have much percussion experience, this was my first appearance in a marching band and I had a ball! Like many Rotarians, I also had a kazoo in my mouth to hum along to the familiar (to Rotarians) tune of “Mighty Union.” I hope this will dispel the rumors that I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. (See photo below).

My instrument was actually the bass drum from my 1960s era Rogers Drum set, which is stored for safekeeping in my basement. I purchased the kit in 1967 from Manny’s Music in New York City, the world-famous store where The Beatles, Hendrix and The Who also bought their gear.

At that time I was a fledging drummer in the seminal garage band The Crimson Floogle. I played in a number of rock and roll bands in Pennsylvania before moving to Geneseo in 1975. Since then my drums have been somewhat neglected, but I’m sure my performance Saturday put me on the musical map, and I expect the offers to play with local bands will come rolling in!

On a more serious note, I also attended the ceremonies at the Geneseo Armory Saturday morning sending off our local National Guard company for a 12 month tour of duty in Afghanistan. Of course we all hope for a safe return next year and are very grateful for their service.

See my face on Facebook

After reading a story in Newsweek about how Facebook is taking over the world, I decided to try to catch up with this social networking web site. Actually I’ve had an account for a while, but that was inspired solely by a desire to check out who my children’s friends are. Now I want to see what Facebook can do for me and my campaign.

In case you don’t know, www.facebook.com was started as a way for students at the same college to meet and get to know each other faster. For a long time, you had to have a college-based e-mail address to sign up. Recently, however, the service opened the doors to anybody and non-college students are now the majority of new members, although the overall demographic still skews fairly young. (By the way the service is absolutely free.)

As an example, when I had Facebook check out the 195 e-mail addresses in my contact list, it only found 14 current members of Facebook, and most of those were either college students or staff. Still I sent a spam blast out to all of those people inviting them to join, so that may increase. (Most of the names were e-mail addresses I gathered over the summer of local Republicans, so that is probably not an accurate measure of Facebook’s overall market penetration.)

I’m a newbie at this, of course, so don’t expect great things from my site, but if you are a member I would be happy to be your friend! A candidate needs all the friends he can get! If you are a member, you can check out my face here!

4th time around

I’m having a lot of fun now that my campaign has finally returned to the village. I spent the first six weeks working in the town outside the village where I had done very little work before (and which was also a lot of fun). In the last two weeks I’ve been working mainly in the village.

For a lot of village homes, this is my fourth time through. I ran for village board (as a Republican) in 2004, and then for Mayor last year (as a Boiled Frog). Both times I tried to get to every home. In between, I also made a pretty thorough canvas of the village taking the first PDDG petition around in the fall of 2005.

Even so, I find that I am still meeting a lot of people for the first time. The average door-to-door campaign is grossly inefficient. Some people you just can’t find at home, even if you go back two or three times in a single campaign. Other people are starting to feel like old friends because I’ve caught them home every time.

I have a number of disadvantages in this campaign that I hope my strenuous door-to-door efforts can overcome. Unlike my competitors, I did not grow up in Geneseo (although my mother did), and I have really only lived here full-time a comparatively short six years (although my business has been in town for a dozen). Therefore my children also did not grow up here, and since they all went to Allendale-Columbia School in the city, I have not benefited from associations they might have had.

Although owning the newspaper has given me great name recognition, I often find I need to overcome certain impressions of people who only know me (or of me) in print. Also my recent efforts through PDDG to slow down the Newman project have made many people think of me as anti-growth.

It is only through long one-on-one sessions that I have any hope of overturning these preconceptions, which is why I have devoted so much time to my door-to-door campaign. Of course the other reason is because I love doing it! Some people may suspect that I prefer to lose elections because then I can campaign more often.

There might be some truth to that, but the issues are so important this time around that I think its time I graduated to the perhaps not so fun business of governing.