Mustafa Tameez has a simple request for the two remaining Mayoral candidates.
In the immediate aftermath of this election, it’s a good time to look back and ask how much we’ve really learned about the candidates and how they propose to deal with the challenges ahead. Normally, it is considered the task of the campaigns to reach out to as many voters as possible — often to the point of annoying voters with negative ads. But given the lack of useful information provided by campaigns in this election, as well as the number of new avenues that allow for civic discourse online, it’s worth considering that we, the people, turn the tables by using those tools to reach the campaigns with our questions and concerns.
As it stands, if a voter sends an e-mail or a message via Facebook or Twitter, they can rest assured that a paid professional staffer will answer it in the best poll-tested language that has been approved by campaign consultants. I’d like to suggest that it might be a refreshing change of pace if voters knew that on at least one set day of the week, let’s say Mondays for the sake of argument, the candidates themselves would answer any and all questions sent via those media. Pick the times, announce the schedule and let’s all have the conversation that many of us feel has been lacking so far.
There have been some opportunities for the candidates to directly engage voters in this fashion – the Chron’s live chats with Annise Parker and Gene Locke are good examples. But I like this idea, and I think the first candidate to jump on it will earn some good free media for it. It would be simple to set something like this up on their websites, and they can put down whatever ground rules they want to make it manageable. I urge them to do it, and I note that there’s nothing stopping any of the other candidates that are still running for their offices to follow suit. What say you?