It’s another of WGx’s honorary — and essentially random — “Willow Glen Mosts” …

Most Polite Political Campaign of 2006: Proudly awarded to all five candidate’s for the San Jose City Council representative for District Six. Heck, let’s include Brad Imamura, too, for bowing out nice and early.

Has anyone else noticed how nice and polite the District 6 campaign for City Council has been? Compared to the public sniping and privately-funded hit pieces typical of the race for Mayor of San Jose and Governor of California, the D6 campaign has been a walk in the park. Just a little bit north of us, the District 3 runoff between Manny Diaz and Sam Liccardo has hit a new low.

The candidates are collectively so pleasant that the WG Times hasn’t offered an endorsement, profiling all five in its Novemebr edition.

Even the weekly Metro, which has gotten all worked-up over most of the other campaigns, has nothing interesting to say about D6, quietly endorsing Pierluigi Oliverio, but not blaring their opinion with big headlines and glossy photos they’ve used for their other endorsements. addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fwillowglenextra.com%2F2006%2F11%2Fmost-polite-campaign-in-wg%2F'; addthis_title = 'Most+Polite+Campaign+in+WG%21'; addthis_pub = '';

Because it’s fun to boil down complex problems into cute one-page photo layouts, the SJ Mercury News asked the five remaining City Council candidates for their answers to a series of questions. Their brief (and possibly edited) answers are available in today’s SJMN: “5 questions with candidates for S.J. City Council District 6”

The published article in the actual newspaper includes easy-to-read columns and nice pictures of each candidate. The online version isn’t presented that way and might be hard for you to read. In the interest of reader comprehension, WGx has hijacked the Merc’s content to present the candidate answers in a possibly more intellgible format. (more…)

With only six weeks left until Election Day, the fun really begins. Phantom phone calls and celebrity voicemails about statewide issues aside, we’ve got some important voting to do right here in both San Jose and Willow Glen.

Before casting your vote, please read more than just your neighbor’s lawn sign. The mayoral candidates got back into the swing of things earlier this month, with a debate hosted by the Cambrian Neighborhood Council. Things are getting testy. The SJ Business Journal reported the two candidates sparred over the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative and the role of eminent domain. The SJ Mercury News said the same thing about the candidates and their approach to the NorCal garbage scandal.

And since that debate, the two have gone on to argue further about the use of campaign contributions by themselves and their supporters.

This could get interesting.

Hey? What happened? The election lawn sign virus exploded this week, with several new signs hitting lawns (and a few vacant lots) across Willow Glen.

In particular, the corners of Lincoln/Curtner and Meridian/Curci are suddenly covered with political blight. It was bad enough when Chuck Reed’s signs went up immediately after the Shell station closed, but now the corner has taken on new life. Steve Tedesco, Karen Sinunu, Cindy Chavez, and the fine folks at “No on Measure A” seem to have arrived as a group this week.

Is it too much to ask these sign proliferators to remove the obviously outdated signs right next to their brand new ones? The Fair has been over for two months. … Or is there actually some strange honor code among these thieves?

It’s over … ’til November. To tide you over until then, we offer a few comments and observations:

Thanks to everyone who voted … or reminded someone to vote … or helped someone else vote!

Residents of the southeast corner of WG must have enjoyed driving right past another polling place on the way to theirs. Stone Church (Lincoln & Clark) welcomed voters from the precinct to the west of Lincoln Avenue, but those to the east had to drive to WG Baptist Church on the corner of Hicks & Minnesota.

Maybe the “Dave Cortese Fire Truck” could have given them a ride …. It was hard to miss cruising through WG in the early afternoon. It does surprise you, until you look a little closer and realize it’s just a big red truck, not an official city fire engine.

WGx was featured nicely on a few other election websites this week, including in the comments section in San Jose Inside (See comment #22) and Silicon Valley Newsblog. No, we didn’t write those comments ourselves ;-). Our final bit of Mayoral News coverage was also picked up by the Topix news aggregator, which featured one of our stories on its Willow Glen news feeds for most of the day Monday.

If you were waiting for the WG Times to provide you with your election coverage, we hope you didn’t miss your chance to vote. The paper printed an excellent review of most offices and issues (including its mayoral endorsement), but wasn’t delivered door-to-door until Election Day itself.

Now, will someone please remove and recycle all of those lawn signs? Thank you.

Yeah … we know you were going to do it anyway, but just in case you forgot … If you need to, you can visit Santa Clara County’s Registrar of Voters website to find your polling place. If you’re having trouble finding your polling place, you can also call 1-866-430-VOTE.

Are you still undecided for Tuesday’s mayoral election? You are not alone. Here are some different reasons why a resident of Willow Glen might vote one way or another for mayor … (more…)

With election day less than one week away, here’s a recap of the candidates for Mayor of San Jose and their appearances in various places and media outlets over the past few weeks. Since the five major candidates have participated in an awe-inspiring quantity of forums, there’s no way we can list them all here. Here are some that caught our interest: (more…)

OK, they are not technically candidates for mayor, but they are politicians, and did show up for introductions and a brief word during the WGNA Mayoral Debate earlier in May … We briefly highlight the candidates for SCC Supervisor, District 4, and the SCC District Attorney. (more…)

The latest in our continuing “Mayoral Coverage” …

The mayoral forum in Willow Glen earlier this month also had some lighter moments, when candidates were asked to give the crowd a status report: How are they holding up, do their families miss them, what do they do for fun?

Michael Mulcahy mentioned his wife’s work experience on the staff of former mayor Susan Hammer, but also credited his three young girls with keeping him happy and motivated. “They know what I’m doing and why it’s important,” he said.

Dave Cortese introduced his daughter, who was in the crowd working on a report for a class at UC-Davis. He mentioned the broad age of his children (ages 6-21) as a constant reminder of what’s important to families in San Jose, and he was looking forward to getting home in time to read to his six-year-old before bedtime.

Cindy Chavez had already mentioned her young son Mateo several times, and positively beamed when talking about him getting to send time with his dad on campaign nights.

Chuck Reed’s family members have their own significant accomplishments, which help him keep his role in city leadership in perspective; his daughter is a fighter pilot and his wife is a cancer researcher. For fun, he admitted to watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night that he can.

David Pandori finished off the family tribute with a rather remarkable roll call of his own. He introduced his wife, his mother, his father, an aunt and an uncle, all of whom were in the room, supplementing his all-volunteer campaign staff.